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Britain's Case Against Germany 



Britain's Case Against 
Germany 

An Examination of the Historical Background 
of the German Action in 19 14 



BY 

RAMSAY MUIR, 

Professor of Modern History in the University of Manchester 



/ *i ^ / y 



NEW YORK 
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

MANCHESTER : AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
1914 






Copyright, 1914, by 
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. » 



All Rights Reserved 
First Published, December, 1914 



THE QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS 



DEC 26 1914" 



1 






CONTENTS 



Preface . . . . 
I. The Summer of 1914 . 
II. German Political Theories . 

III. The Two Germanies . 

IV. How Prussia Rules Germany . 

V. Recent German Policy . 

VI. The Alternative to the Doctrine 
OF Power .... 

Index . 



vu 

I 

45 

77 
III 
121 

160 
191 



PREFACE 

DESPITE the difficulty of maintaining an atti- 
tude of aloofness and impartiality during a 
great war, I have honestly tried in this little book 
to see the facts plainly, and never to tamper with 
them. My main purpose is to show that the great 
issue for which we are now fighting is no new 
thing, and has not emerged suddenly out of diplo- 
matic difficulties in the Balkans. It is the result of 
a poison which has been working in the European 
system for more than two centuries, and the chief 
source of that poison is Prussia. Accordingly, I 
have tried to show ( i ) that the action of Germany 
in 1914 is due to a theory of international politics 
which has taken possession of the minds of the 
German people since the middle of the nineteenth 
century; (2) that this theory is the outcome of 
the traditional policy of the Prussian state during 
the last two hundred and fifty years; (3) that it 
had to fight against a far nobler and more inspiring 
ideal, the ideal of the Germany of Goethe, of Stein 
and of Dahlmann, and only the dazzling success of 
the Prussian policy as pursued by Bismarck made 
possible its victory; (4) that the German Empire 
of to-day is so organised as to ensure the dominion 
of the Prussian military monarchy and of Prussian 
ideas and methods over the rest of Germany; and 



viii PREFACE 

(5) that the policy of this Empire during the last 
quarter of a century has been the natural sequel of 
earlier Prussian action, and has found its inevitable 
culmination in the monstrous war of 19 14. 

But over against the Prussianised German State, 
with its poisonous belief in brute force, I have tried 
to show that there has been growing up in the rest 
of the civilised world a far nobler and saner view 
of the way in which international relations should 
be conducted. This view, increasing steadily in 
strength, has expressed itself in the development of 
the Concert of Europe, in the establishment of 
treaties for the protection of small states, in the 
growth of international arbitration, and in the 
whole remarkable movement which culminated in 
the Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907. Ger- 
many has been throughout the most determined 
opponent of this whole movement; Britain has 
been throughout its strongest and most strenuous 
supporter. 

In the British Empire, indeed, and in all that it 
increasingly stands for, we may reasonably claim 
to see the absolute antithesis of the German ideal, 
its belief in self-goverment, in freedom, in variety 
over against the German belief in military mon- 
archy, rigid discipline and uniformity ; its belief in 
peace over against the German praise of war; its 
belief that Freedom and Justice, and not mere 
physical Power, are the supreme ends and justifica- 
tion of the state. Perhaps this sharp conflict of 
ideals may provide part of the explanation for the 



PREFACE ix 

extraordinary hatred which Germans express for 
everything British. 

It is not for Power that we are fighting ; it is not 
even for national existence, though that would be 
imperilled by a German victory. It is a conflict of 
national ideals, a struggle for all the deepest and 
highest things for which the best Englishmen have 
laboured in the past : for freedom, for the rights of 
small nationalities, for international honour, for the 
possibility of peaceful and friendly relationships 
between equal and mutually respecting states. 

I cannot understand how, on such an issue, any 
Briton of military age can hesitate for a moment 
to offer himself for the combat. In a struggle 
where all that we hold dear is at stake, we should 
need no urging to throw all our strength into the 
scale. If we lose, then all is lost. If we win, but 
the victory is won by our allies alone or mainly, 
and we have not taken at least an equal part in 
the strife, the honour of Britain will be tarnished. 

The index has been compiled by Miss J. M. 
Potter, M.A. I have to thank Professor Tout for 
reading the proofs, but the book has been produced 
so rapidly that it is possible some errors may have 
escaped even him. 

R. M. 

Manchester, 

November, 19 14. 



Britain's Case Against 
Germany 



CHAPTER I 

THE SUMMER OF I914 

^ I ^HE colossal war of 19 14 has already meant 
-■- the killing or maiming of hundreds of thou- 
sands of the best manhood in the most highly 
civilised communities of the world, and it is only 
beginning. It has brought unspeakable miseries, 
murder, torture, outrage, robbery, starvation, de- 
spair, to millions of innocent old men, women, 
and children in the areas of fighting. It has so 
desolated some of the most prosperous and smiling 
regions of the world that it will take years, per- 
haps generations, to restore them to a condition 
as happy as they enjoyed in the early summer of 
19 14. It has ruthlessly destroyed many of the 
most ancient and venerated monuments of civilisa- 
tion, sanctuaries of the human spirit, which had 
stood undisturbed through all the storms of cen- 
turies. It has caused the destruction of innumera- 
ble valuable things slowly created by human 
labour, the sinking of ships, the burning of homes, 
the ruin of factories and mines. It has dislo- 
cated the commerce and industry of the world, and 



f 



2 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

inflicted upon labouring men everywhere, even in 
the non-combatant countries, a huge volume of 
unnecessary hardship. It has imposed upon all 
the states engaged in it, and upon many which 
are not engaged, an intolerable burden of debt 
incurred for entirely unproductive expenditure, and 
this crushing load will for generations make the 
lot of poor folk harder, and render more difficult 
and more slow the task of improving their con- 
ditions of life. In short, this war has already 
set back, perhaps for generations, the progress 
of European civilisation. And, whatever the 
ultimate results of the struggle may be, it must 
leave behind it a poison of mutual hatred between 
nations which will go on rankling, it may be 
for generations, and make it almost impossible 
to establish those relations of mutual respect and 
confidence between nations upon which alone a 
reasonable and stable European system can arise. 

And all this — for what ? 

According to the present belief of nearly every 
Englishman, Frenchman, Belgian and Russian, of 
most Italians and Americans, of some Germans 
and many Austrians, in short, of the greater part 
of the human race capable of forming a judg- 
ment upon such a subject, the responsibility for 
all this fruitless waste of human blood and tears 
rests primarily upon the rulers of Germany and 
(in a less degree) those of Austria; and second- 
arily upon the intellectual leaders of the German 
public, the journalists, the politicians, the pro- 
fessors — ^perhaps especially the professors — who 



THE SUMMER OF 1914 3 

created the public opinion which enabled their gov- 
ernment to act as it has acted. That belief has 
been reached unwillingly, and there are many who 
have resisted it, incredulously, till the logic of 
facts convinced them; because they have found it 
difficult to believe that any government of a civ- 
ilised state could so act, and still more difficult to 
believe that the leaders of a great nation, which 
has led the world in philosophy, in music, and in 
many branches of learning, could have allowed its 
very soul to be so poisoned as to support such a 
course of action, and to gloze over the crimes by 
which it has been accompanied. 

The conviction which most of the world now 
holds in regard to the guilt of Germany in this war 
may be summarised in a few sentences, which, 
taken together, form a very grave indictment. 

(i) The original cause out of which this war 
sprang, the Austro-Serbian question, not only could 
have been settled if all the great powers had 
desired its settlement, but was in a fair way of 
being settled, when Germany, though not directly 
concerned, intervened with an act which made a 
general conflagration inevitable. Germany there- 
fore is responsible for the war. 

(2) Germany had meant to fight a war of pure 
aggression, if not on the Austro-Serbian issue, then , 
on some other; she meant to fight this war either • 
this year or next, and all her policy was leading 
up to it. She had prepared for it beforehand in 
the most elaborate detail, under cover of a pre- / 
tended desire for peace. She meant to fight, and 



4 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

either to cripple or to ruin, all the powers now 
opposed to her; and although she would have pre- 

A ferred to deal with them separately, and hoped to 
do so, she had made her arrangements for dealing 
with them in conjunction. 

(3) From the beginning of the war she has, 
on her side, so conducted the struggle as to show 
that, under her present rulers, she is a state with- 
out honour, a state which regards her most sol- 
emnly assumed obligations as of no avail when 
they stand in the way of her immediate con- 
venience; a state therefore with which it is im- 
possible to have any treaty relations until her 
system and principles of government are radically 
changed. She has also conducted the war with 
a deliberate and calculated brutality to which 

y modern warfare presents no parallel, which vio- 
lates many solemn international rules formally rati- 
fied by Germany herself, and which makes of no 
avail the progress that has been made in the human- 
ising of war. 

This is an indictment so grave that it ought to 
be fully substantiated. We shall therefore begin 
by resuming, as briefly as possible, the evidence 
for these three assertions, even though, in doing 
so, we may have to cover some well-trodden 
ground. That done, we shall next be able to 
enquire how far the ideas that make this kind 
of action possible are prevalent among the ruling 
classes, and among the mass of the people, in the 
German nation; how far these ideas are rooted 
in German history; how they have shown them- 



THE SUMMER OF 1914 5 

selves in recent German policy; and what are the 
rival ideas, the rival conceptions of national 
honour, of progress and of " culture " with which 
they are now engaged in deadly strife. 

i. — Germany deliberately precipitated the War. 

When the heir to the Austrian throne was 
assassinated by a Serbian on June 23, it was nat- 
ural that Austria should be indignant against the 
Serbians, and ready to jump to the conclusion that 
they had encouraged the crime. It would have 
been right and proper that Austria should require 
Serbia not only to disown the crime but to do her 
best to track and punish those who had a hand 
in it; and if Serbia had failed to do this nobody 
would have thought it unreasonable that Austria 
should punish her. 

The Austrian government did not adopt this 
course. During a month they held an enquiry into 
the crime behind closed doors. They gave no indi- 
cation to any of the powers except Germany, not 
even to their ally, Italy,^ as to the course of action 
they proposed to adopt. They waited until a 
moment when many of the ambassadors were away 
on holiday, as they would not have been if it had 
been known that a crisis was approaching, so as 
to make it difficult for the diplomatists to inter- 
fere. Then, on July 22,, they suddenly delivered 

' British Blue Book, Nos. i, 161. I quote throughout from 
the popular edition, " Great Britain and the European 
Crisis." 



6 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

an ultimatum to Serbia^ of such a kind that Sir 
Edward Grey, who at this stage had much sym- 
pathy with Austria, said that he " had never before 
seen one state address to another independent state 
a document of such a formidable character " and 
that at least one of its demands was " hardly con- 
sistent with the maintenance of Serbia's inde- 
pendent sovereignty." ^ These monstrous de- 
mands, which throughout implied that the Serbian 
government was responsible for the murder, were 
not accompanied by any proofs.* And Serbia was 
required to accept them all within forty-eight hours 
on pain of war. The diplomatists of all the powers 
except Germany urged upon Austria that more 
time ought to be allowed,* if the danger of Euro- 
pean war was to be avoided. Austria declined to 
give more time, and moreover made it clear that 
she would not discuss the Serbian question with 
anybody. In spite of this, England, France and 
Russia did their best to persuade Serbia to yield 
as far as possible ^ — a difficult thing for Russia 

^British Blue Book, No. 4. 

Uh. No. 5. 

' The document purporting to give the Austrian dossier 
which appears in the German White Book (p. 28) is merely 
a general statement, unsupported by evidence, and is seem- 
ingly only an extract from a German newspaper. It ought 
not to be forgotten that in 1909 Austria projected a declara- 
tion of War against Serbia, and that in the celebrated Fried- 
jung trial it was shown that the allegations on which this 
declaration was to be based were founded on documents 
forged in the Austrian legation at Belgrade. See "The 
Southern Slav Question," by Scotus Viator. 

* British Blue Book, Nos. 18, 13, 25 ; Russian Orange 
Book, Nos. 6, 12, 14. 

' British Blue Book, Nos. 12, 15, 25. 



THE SUMMER OF 1914 ; 

to do. Before the time fixed by the ultimatum 
Serbia sent an extremely humble and conciliatory 
reply/ in which she gave way upon every point 
but two, and offered to submit these to arbitration. 
No independent state has perhaps ever submitted 
itself to greater humiliation before another. The 
Serbian reply gave to Austria all, and more than 
all, that she could reasonably expect.^ Neverthe- 
less Austria declined to accept it. She would not 
even agree to take the Serbian note as a basis of 
discussion.* She declared war, and began to bom- 
bard Belgrade. 

It is quite obvious that Austria did not want 
peaceful satisfaction from Serbia. She wanted 
war. It was the opinion of most of the diplo- 
matists concerned, perhaps of all, that the note 
to Serbia had been intentionally drafted in such 
a way as to ensure its rejection.* Why did 
Austria take this line, and run the risk of a Euro- 
pean conflagration ? Obviously because the murder 
presented a good excuse for crushing Serbia once 
for all, and Serbia (as we shall see^) had long 
been an obstacle in the way of the Austro-German 
scheme for obtaining control over the Balkan 
peninsula. Once before, in pursuance of this great 
scheme, Austria had taken the risk of war, when 
she committed the high-handed act of annexing 
Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908. That was the 

'British Blue Book, No. 39- 

'^ Sir Edward Grey's opinion, lb. No. 46. 

« British Blue Book, No. 61. 

* lb. Nos. 20, 161. 

' See below, Chap. V. 



8 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

occasion on which Germany declared that " she 
stood beside her ally in shining armour." The 
bluff had succeeded on that occasion. It seems 
clear that Germany had persuaded Austria that 
it would succeed on this occasion also, and that 
none of the opposing powers was in a position to 
fight. Certainly Austria had been convinced that 
Russia,, the power chiefly concerned, would not 
fight.^ In 1908 the two Germanic powers had 
played a two-handed game. It is impossible to 
resist the conclusion that they were doing the same 
thing now. True, the German officials insisted 
that they did not know the contents of the Aus- 
trian ultimatum.^ That may have been literally 
true, because it was a useful thing to be able to 
say, especially as the other ally in the Triple Al- 
liance, Italy, had been kept in the dark. But it 
should be noted (i) that the German Kaiser and 
Chancellor had an opportunity of discussion with 
the Austrian statesmen between the murder and 
the ultimatum, when they attended the funeral of 
the Archduke, and it is incredible that the oppor- 
tunity was not used to discuss their future course 
of action; (2) that the German ambassador at 
Vienna (one of the few diplomatists not off duty 
at the crisis) did know the contents of the note 
beforehand;^ (3) that if the German government 
did not know what the ultimatum contained, it 
was a monstrous thing to pledge German support 

^ British Blue Book, Nos. 32, 33. 
' lb. No. 18. 
» lb. No. 161. 



THE SUMMER OF 1914 9 

beforehand to Austria in carrying it out ; ^ and 
(4) that it is incredible that Austria should never 
have consulted her closest ally and sole supporter 
in regard to an act that was likely to bring on a 
European war. The full truth will be known one 
day; but in the meanwhile no reasonable student 
of the documents can avoid the conclusion that 
Austria was encouraged by Germany, probably in 
the belief that a bold bluff would succeed, into a 
monstrously high-handed act which was likely to 
cause a general war, and into committing that act 
in such a way as to make the avoidance of war 
extremely difficult. 

So ended the first stage of the crisis: the war 
between Austria and Serbia had been precipitated. 
The diplomatists now devoted themselves to the 
almost hopeless task of preventing it from spread- 
ing, and in particular of reaching some sort of 
agreement between Austria and Russia, the tradi- 
tional protector of Serbia. It is needless to follow 
the course of the fevered negotiations which were 
crowded into the days between July 24 and Au- 
gust 2, when the die was cast. But certain broad 
facts come out very clearly. England was des- 
perately anxious for peace, and Sir Edward Grey 
and the British ambassadors at the various courts 
took the lead in urging every conceivable argu- 
ment, and trying every device that could be thought 
of. France, the ally of Russia, and Italy, the ally 

^ " We therefore permitted Austria a completely free hand 
in her action towards Serbia, but have not participated in her 
preparations. Austria chose the method of presenting . . . 
a note." German White Book, p. 5. 



10 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

of Germany and Austria, were equally zealous, 
and the representatives of these three powers 
worked hand in hand in the most intimate way 
throughout the crisis. Russia also was eager for 
peace, as she had already shown by urging Serbia 
to give way, and as she showed at every stage 
of the negotiations; but she was resolved that 
she would not again submit to such a humiliation, 
or be forced to such a desertion of a small power 
which looked to her as a protector, as she had 
had to endure in 1908; and even if her ministers 
had been willing, public feeling in Russia had been 
stirred to such a pitch that it would have been 
impossible for them to submit without raising a 
positive revolution. 

What of the attitude of Austria? During the 
first few days she maintained her stiff-necked atti- 
tude, and refused to discuss the Serbian question 
in any form. She was evidently still hoping that 
the bluff would succeed. But after a few days she 
realised that the danger was serious, and that what- 
ever the German officials might say, Russia would 
fight unless some settlement was reached. That 
conviction brought her to a more reasonable atti- 
tude. On July 3 1 Sir Edward Grey proposed that 
Austria should stop the advance of her troops 
in Serbia, that Russia on her side should take 
no military steps, and that the other powers should 
consider what satisfaction Serbia ought to give to 
Austria.^ To this Russia agreed at once;^ and 

'British Blue Book, No. in. 
'^ Russian Orange Book, No. 67. 



THE SUMMER OF 1914 " 

on the following day Austria also accepted the 
proposal, thus for the first time permitting the 
powers to discuss the questions between her- 
self and Serbia/ On this basis, it seems safe 
to assume that a peaceful settlement would 
have been reached.^ The obstacle was no 
longer in the obstinacy of Austria. Where 
was it? 

Throughout the negotiations the German gov- 
ernment never tired of asserting that it was eagerly 
and assiduously working for peace, and using its 
influence with Austria in that direction. This is 
stated over and over again, but the only definite 
German step of which there is any proof was the 
forwarding of English suggestions to the Austrian 
government without comment. In the German 
White Book issued after the war began there is 
not a single document showing that Germany used 
any influence upon Austria in a peaceful direc- 
tion; indeed, the only despatches between Berlin 
and Vienna contained in this book are an empty 
note about the Serbian ultimatum on July 24, and 
a telegram from the German ambassador at Vienna 
on July 28 saying that Sir Edward Grey's media- 
tion " appears belated," " after the opening of hos- 
tilities by Serbia ! " It is difficult to believe that if 
Germany had really been using pressure upon Aus- 
tria she would not have included some evidence to 
this effect in the official statement of her case. 
As for Germany's zeal for peace, the one clear 

^ British Blue Book, Nos. 131, 135, 161. 
* Russian Orange Book, Nos. 69, 71, 



12 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

and definite fact is, that every proposal and sug- 
gestion made by Sir Edward Grey was rejected 
(with polite expressions) as "inadmissible"; Sir 
Edward Grey even begged the German government, 
if they objected to his suggestions, to suggest any 
way out that seemed suitable : " mediation,'' he 
said, " was ready to come into operation by any 
method that Germany thought possible if only 
Germany would ' press the button ' in the interests 
of peace." ^ Two days later Sir Edward Grey 
went so far as to say that if Germany would pro- 
pose any reasonable scheme, and if Russia and 
France did not accept it, he would have nothing 
to do with Russia and France.^ To these appeals 
the German government, so zealous for peace, 
made no reply whatever: on the contrary, on the 
very evening on which Sir Edward Grey sent the 
first of these two messages, the German Chancellor 
was proposing to the British ambassador that 
England should remain neutral while Germany 
attacked France and violated Belgium.* Lastly, 
on the very day on which Austria agreed to let the 
powers discuss the Serbian question, the German 
government sent an ultimatum to Russia involving 
war within twelve hours.* Is it possible, in face 
of these facts, to deny that Germany first urged 

^ British Blue Book, No. 84. 

Uh. No. III. 

" Ih. No. 85. 

* Russian Orange Book, No. 70. The despatch announc- 
ing the ultimatum immediately follows a telegram from the 
Russian ambassador congratulating Sir E. Grey upon the 
prospect of securing peace! 



THE SUMMER OF 1914 13 

Austria into a line of action which made war likely, 
then placed every difficulty in the way of a peace- 
ful solution while pretending to strive for peace, 
and finally, when peace seemed likely to be secured 
in spite of all difficulties, suddenly precipitated war 
by its own act? 

The German defence of the ultimatum to Russia, 
as given in the German White Paper, is that Russia 
was threatening Germany by mobilising.^ There 
is some obscurity about the actual dates and facts 
concerning the mobilisation.^ But it seems to be 
clear that Germany herself had been actually mo- 
bilising in secret for some days before she sent her 
ultimatum demanding that Russia should demo- 
bilise.^ In any case, it is well known that Russian 
mobilisation is a much slower thing than German, 
taking weeks instead of days ; and under these cir- 
cumstances a power which was zealous for peace 
might reasonably be expected to risk a delay of a 
day or two at a moment when peace seemed to 
be in sight. And there is another significant fact. 
It was primarily against Austria that Russia was 
mobilising : the armies opposite the Austrian fron- 
tier had begun to assemble two days before the 
armies opposite the German frontier. Yet Austria 
sent no ultimatum; Austria was ready to discuss 

^ German White Paper, pp. 13-15. 

^ Russia seems to have issued 'orders for the mobilisations 
of the regions near Austria on 29 July, the day on which 
Austria attacked Serbia (British Blue Book, No. 78). The 
general Russian mobilisation was ordered on 31 July, after 
the general Austrian mobilisation. 

" British Blue Book, Nos. 105, 113. 



y- 



14 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

and to make terms; Austria actually did not de- 
clare war against Russia until five days after Ger- 
many! Why, then, need Germany take action? 
There is only one imaginable reason. It was be- 
cause she was afraid that peace was going to he 
assured, and she meant to have war. 

ii. — The War had been long intended and prepared. 

It is, in the nature of things, not easy to obtain 
documentary proof of Germany's far-reaching and 
detailed preparations for war, the evidences of 
which have accumulated since the war began, and 
have, in the mass, convinced most men that every 
detail of the German attack on Belgium and 
France had been arranged beforehand. It is, for 
example, remarkable that when German armies 
appeared before fortresses in Belgium and France 
they should find it possible to bring into action 
immediately big guns requiring concrete platforms 
which, according to artillery experts, require three 
weeks to settle; it cannot be proved, as yet, that 
these platforms had been secretly constructed be- 
forehand by agents of the German government; 
but it is certainly an extraordinary coincidence 
that there should be platforms ready, at the right 
spots. It is suggestive to learn that orders from 
Germany for the chartering of coalships to sail 
to points in the Atlantic Ocean reached Cape 
Town a week before the murder of the Archduke : 
but it cannot be proved that these ships were des- 
tined to provide supply for commerce-raiders. We 



THE SUMMER OF 1914 I5 

may well wonder why, long before there was any 
alarm of war, there was a sudden and inexplicable 
rush of orders from Germany to sell Canadian 
Pacific shares on the London Stock Exchange. It 
is not without significance that the army ma- 
noeuvres to be held last August in Central Germany 
were to be on so much larger a scale than ever 
before that many of the reserves were to be called 
out; the visitor to Germany, who was told of this 
in May and thought nothing of it then, cannot 
now fail to realise how convenient a cloak these 
unprecedented manoeuvres afforded for the accu- 
mulation of supplies and equipment in the direc- 
tion of the French frontier. A hundred details of 
this sort, each perhaps capable of explanation by 
itself, have combined to produce a widespread 
moral certainty that all the arrangements for a 
war that was to be waged this summer had been 
completed in Germany long before the Archduke's 
murder. 

But there is no need to rely upon scattered de- 
tails of this sort. Evidence of a far more definite 
kind as to Germany's warlike intentions is 
abundant. 

In the first place, there is the enormous and 
rapidly increasing German expenditure on arma- 
ments during the last few years. The expenditure 
on the navy has naturally attracted most attention 
in this country, where the strain of keeping abreast 
of it has been sharply felt. The beginning of 
the modern German navy really dates from the 



i6 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

Navy Bill of 1897. The conviction that the object 
of its creators was to challenge British sea-power 
first took root in 1900, when, in the middle of the 
South African War, Germany suddenly revised 
the scale of expenditure established in 1897, ^^^ 
practically doubled its navy. From that time on- 
ward England has found herself forced to build 
against Germany. She tried, from 1906 to 1908, 
the experiment of retarding the rate of construc- 
tion, in the hope that Germany would follow suit : 
thie German reply was to raise their naval esti- 
mates by 33 per cent. She opened negotiations 
for a limitation of armaments on both sides, only 
to be told that this was impracticable. As late as 
19 13, England suggested a " naval holiday," or 
suspension of new construction by mutual consent, 
but the reply was equally unfavourable. Germany 
increased her vote for the navy by i 1,000,000 per 
annum in 1912, and by half a million in 1913, and 
then we had to follow suit in proportion. When 
the war began Germany had a navy more powerful 
and more costly than England had found neces- 
sary ten years before, though the very existence of 
England depends upon command of the sea. The 
rapid construction of this vast force was not meant 
for show only: it was meant to be used. And 
alongside of the programme of naval construction 
had gone forward an elaborate fortification of 
Heligoland and of the highly defensible German 
North-sea coast, such as to provide an impene- 
trable fortress where the main fleet could rest in 
safety while submarines and other modern devices 



THE SUMMER OF 1914 17 

were employed to wear down the English numerical 
superiority. This quite practicable scheme of op- 
erations has been openly discussed and described 
for years past in German publications of many 
types. At the same time the Kiel Canal was being 
widened and deepened, to permit of the free pas- 
sage of warships back and forward between the 
North Sea and the Baltic. Many people have 
prophesied that a war between England and Ger- 
many would come when the enlargement of the 
Canal was completed. It was completed in the 
early summer of 19 14. 

Still more striking than the naval activities of 
Germany during these years have been the increases 
in her land army. In 191 1 an Army Act was 
passed by the Reichstag which provided for a very 
large increase to the peace- footing of the army, 
involving, of course, a proportionately larger in- 
crease of the number of trained reserves; the act 
also provided for a huge expenditure on guns, 
air-craft, motor-transport and other munitions of 
war. This enlargement of 191 1 was defended 
on the ground that it has always been a rule in 
Germany that the army on a peace-footing ought 
to be kept in a steady ratio to the population of 
1 : 100, and that there had therefore been at 
intervals of a few years a long series of Army 
Acts providing for increases in the army propor- 
tionate to the growth of population. The explana- 
tion is perhaps not unreasonable, though the Ger- 
man army, before 191 1, was already the most 
formidable in Europe. But this explanation was 



i8 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

quite insufficient to account for the passing of a 
second Army Act in 191 2, and a third in 19 13, 
each providing for more sensational increases than 
the last, and each devoting also huge sums of 
money for the increase of those mechanical means 
of destruction upon which, during this war, Ger- 
many has relied even more than upon the won- 
derful valour of her soldiers. 

What was the reason for all these amazing in- 
creases ? Germany was threatened by no power in 
the world; on the contrary she was herself loudly 
proclaiming that her relations with other powers, 
and notably with England, had markedly improved, 
especially since their co-operation in the settle- 
ment of the issues raised by the Balkan War. The 
other European powers inevitably felt themselves 
threatened, and had to take measures to defend 
themselves. France, always nervous about Ger- 
many, had already forced the whole of her man- 
hood to undergo military training : but as the popu- 
lation of Germany is half as large again as that 
of France, this left her still markedly inferior in 
strength, and she could only respond by her Three- 
Years' Law, increasing the length of military 
service. Russia, the power which had tried to 
persuade the other nations of Europe to agree to 
disarmament, only to meet with a rebuff from 
Germany, also found it necessary to increase her 
forces. Most significant of all, little Belgium, 
though protected by the guarantee of her neutrality, 
thought it necessary for the first time to establish 
compulsory military service. Her new system had 



THE SUMMER OF 1914 i9 

not been brought into working order, when she 
found how well-grounded her suspicions had been. 
Over all Europe, in 191 3, brooded the horror of 
the coming world-war. And the source of this 
dread was Germany. This was apparent to the 
whole world. 

There is yet another significant thing about these 
ominous German preparations. Germany could 
not raise the money for the vast expenditure which 
she had undertaken, by the ordinary methods of 
taxation; or at any rate, her rulers could not per- 
suade the Reichstag to agree on the taxes to be 
imposed. She therefore had recourse to an un- 
heard-of mode of raising money — a war levy of 
£50,(XX),ooo, to be raised by assessments on capital. 
Such a method could not conceivably be made a 
regular mode of raising money for annual expendi- 
ture. It could only be justified as an emergency 
measure — as a means of meeting a particular strain 
not likely to recur. It appeared therefore that the 
unparalleled military measures of 1912 and 19 13 
were meant as a special effort for an immediate 
purpose. That immediate purpose could only be 
a war, and a war to be promptly undertaken. 

Such were the public and notorious events which 
preceded the war alarms of this summer. On the 
head of these preparations we find Germany de- 
liberately forcing on war on an issue which need 
not have caused war at all, and which would have 
been settled but for Germany's intervention. Is 
it, in face of these facts, possible to deny that Ger- 
many had for some years been preparing to engage 



20 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

in war, and that even if the Archduke had never 
been murdered, war would have come this summer? 

But what were the motives of this appalling 
and deliberate crime? Why was Germany coolly 
and methodically preparing for war during these 
last three years, when every power in Europe has 
been striving to attain friendly relations with her? 

Since the war began Germany has done her best, 
especially in neutral countries, to maintain the atti- 
tude of an innocent victim, beset by a combination 
of malignant and unscrupulous foes. She has 
put forward two distinct explanations of the war, 
which she employs alternately or concurrently. 

According to the first explanation she is defend- 
ing her " culture,'* her very existence, from the 
vast semi-barbarous power of Russia. The sub- 
title of her very disingenuous and incomplete of- 
ficial statement or White Paper is " Germany's 
Reasons for War with Russia," and the aim of 
this document is to suggest that the war was forced 
on by Russia, and was essentially defensive in 
character. The infinitely fuller and franker col- 
lections of papers published by the British and 
Russian governments show that this pretext is en- 
tirely baseless, as we have already seen. But the 
very strategy of the war shows that it was in no 
sense a war of defence against Russia. If it had 
been true that the very existence of Germany and 
Austria was threatened by a great Pan-Slavist 
movement led by Russia, the natural course of 
action for Germany would have been to concen- 
trate the bulk of her forces in the East, for the 



THE SUMMER OF 1914 21 

defence of herself and her ally. Even if France 
had been drawn into the war by her alliance with 
Russia, a much smaller force than Germany has 
actually employed in the West would have served 
to guard the short French frontier from Luxem- 
burg to Bel fort. In a defensive war Germany 
would have had the assistance of her ally Italy, 
which has been withheld on the express ground 
that the war is one of aggression, and which would 
have kept much of the French army engaged. In 
a war limited to the actual Franco-German 
frontier she would not have been troubled by the 
resistance of Belgium, which has turned out to be 
much more formidable than she ever anticipated. 
In such a war also she could certainly have 
counted upon the neutrality of Britain. Her mili- 
tary position would have been immensely stronger 
than it is. In short the whole plan and conduct 
of her campaign shows that she was not thinking 
primarily of Russia; but primarily of overrunning 
and conquering Belgium, which she has now de- 
clared to be a province annexed to her Empire, 
secondly of ruining France and robbing her of her 
colonies, as the Imperial Chancellor practically an- 
nounced beforehand in his negotiations with 
Britain,^ and thirdly of striking a blow at the naval 
and colonial supremacy of Britain, though if pos- 
sible (as her eagerness for British neutrality 
shows) she would have preferred to postpone that 
part of her programme to a later date. The Rus- 
sian bogey has been very useful as a means of 
^ British Blue Book, Nos. 29, 85, loi. 



22 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

i 
making the war popular among the German people, 
and of winning sympathy among the neutrals who 
distrust the recent record of the Russian govern- 
ment. But the course of events shows that it was 
in no sense the real motive of the war. 

The second explanation of the war, put forward 
with great vigour since the intervention of Eng- 
land, is that it is an attack upon Germany by a 
combination cunningly prepared by treacherous 
England, which was jealous of the growing pros- 
perity of Germany, and wished to destroy it. 

This explanation, which brushes aside the vio- 
lation of Belgian neutrality as a matter of no im- 
portance, a mere hypocritical pretext put forward 
by England, seems to be widely accepted by the 
German people. It is entirely inconsistent with 
the whole course of the negotiations preceding 
the war, during which England, by Germany's own 
admission, strained every nerve to preserve peace/ 
But it can also be dismissed on other grounds. 
In 1 91 2, when the German preparations for war 
were at their height, England, feeling that her 
friendship and co-operation with France might 
have created a not wholly unnatural but dangerous 
nervousness in the minds of German statesmen, did 
her very best to remove any apprehensions that 
might exist: at this time relations between Eng- 
land and Germany were thought to be greatly 
improving, the German press had begun to con- 
gratulate itself upon the improvement, and English 
statesmen were anxious to encourage the growth 

* German White Book, p. 11. 



THE SUMMER OF 1914 23 

of good feeling. The English ambassador placed 
in the hands of the German government a formal 
statement drawn up by the Cabinet, which stated 
that England had not entered into any engage- 
ments with any other power which involved ag- 
gressive action against Germany, and that she 
bound herself not to enter into any such engage- 
ments in the future/ That ought to have been 
enough to remove any German fears of English 
attack, if they existed. The German answer was 
instructive. It proposed that England should bind 
herself to unconditional neutrality in any war in 
which Germany should engage! This extraordi- 
nary demand was tantamount to an announcement 
that Germany proposed to engage in war at an 
early date, especially as it was soon followed by 
a further increase in the German fleet and in the 
German army. In effect, indeed, as we can now 
see, it was a covert anticipation of the extraordi- 
nary proposal made on July 29, that England 
should give Germany a free hand to violate the 
neutrality of Belgium and to rob France of all 
her colonies. 

The German government, if it was convinced 
that England was preparing a treacherous attack, 
might perhaps (especially in view of its own diplo- 
matic methods) believe that the English assurance 
of 1 9 12 was a deliberate lie, meant to put them 
off their guard. But there is another and still 
stronger reason for asserting that they did not 
really think that England was going to attack 
* Mr. Asquith's Speech at Cardiff, Sept. 1914. 



24 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

them. German publicists have long delighted to 
declare that England is a decadent and cowardly 
power, so much afraid of war that she would cling 
to peace on even the most dishonourable terms. 
The German Chancellor and Foreign Secretary 
seem to have adopted this view. They appear to 
have been quite convinced that they could persuade 
England to remain neutral. In the famous inter- 
view with the British ambassador the Chancellor 
made a " strong bid for British neutrality *' by 
promising, " provided that the neutrality of Great 
Britain were certain," not to take anything from 
France except her colonies, and to respect the in- 
tegrity of Belgium after the violation of her neu- 
trality had served its purpose — ^provided that Bel- 
gium did not resist.^ Even when Sir Edward 
Grey peremptorily refused to consider this " in- 
famous proposal," as Mr. Asquith justly called it, 
the Chancellor still seems to have clung to the be- 
lief that England was a power which would not 
trouble about infamy, if only she was able to 
escape from the perils of war. When on August 4 
the British ambassador delivered the ultimatum 
demanding that the neutrality of Belgium should 
be respected, he had a " painful interview " with 
the excited Chancellor,^ who delivered a harangue 
of twenty minutes, saying that it was " terrible to 
a degree" that Great Britain should make war 
" just for a scrap of paper." " His excellency," 
adds the ambassador, " was so excited, so evidently 

' British Blue Book, No. 85. 
''lb. No. 160. 



THE SUMMER OF 1914 25 

overcome by the news of our action, and so little 
disposed to hear reason, that I refrained from 
adding fuel to the flame by further argument." 
What can be more plain than that the Chancellor 
really believed that England would maintain neu- 
trality, or in other words that she was too cow- 
ardly to fulfil her obligations of honour? But he 
could not both believe that, and also believe that 
England had organised a deliberate attack on 
Germany. 

No, the pretence that England is responsible 
for the war is a very unreal and insincere pre- 
tence, invented only for public consumption. But 
there is more to be said for the view that hatred of 
England by Germany is, at any rate in part, re- 
sponsible for the war. The bitterness of German 
feeling against England which has been displayed 
during the last generation, and especially during 
the last few years, is indeed quite extraordinary, 
and quite inexplicable on any but one ground. It 
was already at full height in the time of 
Treitschke, the bitter, eloquent Berlin Professor, 
at whose feet all German society sat till his death 
in 1896, the great exponent of the doctrine of 
force, with whom hatred of England was a pas- 
sion, and who preached unceasingly that Ger- 
many must make herself the equal of England on 
the sea, and bring about the downfall of this over- 
grown, decadent, tyrannical, hypocritical power. 
Treitschke is the most popular, as he is the most 
readable, of German historians, and he has exer- 
cised a profound influence on German political 



26 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

ideas — an influence whose extent and tendency 
Englishmen are only now beginning to realise, 
for his books have never been translated into 
English. 

But the expression of hatred for England is by 
no means limited to Treitschke and his disciple 
Bernhardi. It spreads through most of the leaders 
of German opinion. In 191 2 an eminent French 
journalist, M. Georges Bourdon, went to Germany 
to interview leading men of every type for the 
Figaro J in the amiable hope of proving that friend- 
ship between France and Germany is possible. 
Most of them, as was perhaps natural, told him 
that all Germans wished to be on good terms with 
France. But most of them added that England 
was the inevitable enemy. He talks with the For- 
eign Secretary, Kiderlen-Waechter; who, defend- 
ing the Army Act, says: "If we are threatened, 
as we appear to be, ought we not to show that we 
are capable of defending ourselves? Who, then, 
is threatening Germany? England." He talks to 
a leading Liberal member of the Reichstag, who 
says that " we have grievances against England, 
with regard to whom German public opinion con- 
stantly has its teeth set on edge." He talks to 
the great pundits. Professor Schmoller and Pro- 
fessor Adolf Wagner; the one tells him that "a 
proof of France's hostile attitude was that she al- 
lied herself with England, the enemy of Ger- 
many"; the other says that "our real adversary 
is England: she has not forgiven us for having 
invaded her industrial and commercial supremacy 



THE SUMMER OF 1914 27 

. . . she is our enemy now, as she was once yours." 
He talks to Prince Lichnowsky, who was till Au- 
gust 4 the popular German ambassador in London : 
" undoubtedly," says this eminent diplomatist, " it 
is England more than France that engages atten- 
tion, and it is her plots and armaments that excite 
uneasiness." He talks to the great landowner, 
Prince Hatzfeldt, who says " it is England towards 
whom our attitude is becoming more and more se- 
vere." " In the mind of every German," M. 
Bourdon concludes, " whether he thinks with pas- 
sion or restraint, is harboured rancour against 
England." Finally he talks with an eminent critic 
and publicist, Herr Alfred Kerr, who uses neither 
phrases nor concealments, but with extraordinary 
frankness goes straight to the heart of the matter. 
" ' It is not a personal quarrel that we seek with 
you (France). Nothing of the kind. But it is in- 
terest, profit, do you see? The whole of Germany 
is hypnotised by the golden calf of profit. . . . You 
are rich. Therefore your possessions are coveted. 
. . . The world's peace? For Germany it means 
the possession of colonies. Yours are desirable. 
. . . But I must say we gaze more towards Eng- 
land than towards you. . . . The reality is the 
permanent threatening of war. . . . War is not out 
of fashion, it's a thing of to-morrow.' He drew 
himself up on his low seat, and with his animated 
forefinger pointed to solid phalanxes on the wall 
waving flags and firing thunder : ' The Return of 
the Huns.' " This is indeed frank : too frank to 
be accepted by most Germans, who (like every- 



28 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

\ 
body else) like to cover up their passions in fine 
words. But it is probably true. For what reason 
have the Germans for hating England, which 
throws open every port that she controls as freely 
to German vessels as to her own? What reason, 
save that she owns many things that they would 
like to possess; and is (for the great Treitschke 
has said it) a decadent, hypocritical and ty- 
rannical power, which has no right to stand 
in the way of the great nation, the nation of 
Kultur. 

Another remarkable fact which emerges from 
M. Bourdon's enquiries is that according to most 
of his interlocutors there is no such thing as an 
independent public opinion in Germany. " Opinion 
with us," says one of them, " is the chorus of 
antiquity; it accompanies the actors, but does not 
participate in the play." " Opinion," says another, 
" is an orchestra, which answers only to the baton 
of the government." " We don't pretend," says 
another, a great banker, " to have opinions upon 
what does not directly concern us. Politics are the 
affair of the government. That is their business." 
No doubt there is some exaggeration in all this, but 
it contains a substantial element of truth. The 
Germans are undoubtedly far more ready to leave 
their national destinies in the hands of their Em- 
peror and the ministers whom he chooses than the 
people of England and France are to leave their 
affairs even in the hands of their elected repre- 
sentatives. And the organisation of public opinion 
by means of a skilfully influenced press has been 



THE SUMMER OF 1914 29 

one of the supreme arts of government in the eyes 
of German statesmen ever since the days of Bis- 
marck, the inventor of the art. Each of Bismarck's 
wars was preceded by a marvellous '' mobilisation 
of public opinion " through the press. And the 
unanimity with which the whole orchestra has been 
playing on the two themes of " England the 
Enemy " and " The Russian Bogey " during the 
last few years may certainly be regarded as part of 
the preparation for this war. 

Our second conclusion therefore is that the war 
which Germany deliberately precipitated on the 
Austro-Serbian question had been foreseen and pre- 
pared down to the minutest detail, especially dur- 
ing the last three years, just as each of Bismarck's 
wars was foreseen and prepared; that it was a 
war of aggression for European and colonial ter- 
ritory; and that it would certainly have taken 
place even if the fatal shot had never been fired 
in Serajevo. 

iii. — Germany has conducted the War dishonour- 
ably and barbarously. 

The war began by the deliberate violation by 
Germany of the neutrality of two small powers, 
Belgium and Luxemburg, both of which Germany 
had formally guaranteed. In the case of Luxem- 
burg the neutrality of the little state was estab- 
lished in 1867, at a congress of the powers held 
in London; and it was actually on the proposal of 
Prussia herself that this arrangement was con- 



30 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

eluded. In the case of Belgium the treaty dates 
from 1839. The only other treaty of this kind is 
that by which the neutrality of Switzerland was 
guaranteed in 181 5. None of these treaties has 
ever been infringed by any power until this year; 
they formed a sign of the good faith and honour 
of Europe, a means of safeguarding the rights of 
small nationalities, a first step, as many believed, 
towards a system of mutual protection of rights, 
which would give Europe secure peace. The 
power which has violated these treaties has struck 
a deadly blow at the system of international law 
and international honour. It has also dishon- 
oured itself, and made it impossible for other 
powers to have treaty relations with it, since its 
word cannot be trusted. 

In the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 Belgium 
had ground to fear that her neutrality might be 
violated by one or other of the combatants. Eng- 
land therefore approached both the French and the 
Prussian governments with a demand for an as- 
surance that the neutrality of Belgium should be 
respected, making it clear that she would throw 
her whole strength into the scale against which- 
ever power should be guilty of this act. She did 
this because, in the words of Mr. Gladstone, then 
Prime Minister, she could not " quietly stand by 
and witness the perpetration of the direst crime 
that ever stained the pages of history, and thus 
become participators in the sin." Both powers 
gave the required assurance, Prussia adding that 
the enquiry was superfluous, in view of the pledged 



THE SUMMER OF 1914 3i 

word of Prussia. These undertakings were strictly 
observed. Germany even abstained from sending 
her wounded across Belgian territory; and when 
the main French army was penned up against the 
Belgian frontier at Sedan, it regarded that frontier 
as an impassable barrier, and laid down its arms, 
thus giving Germany the decisive victory in the 
war. 

In the present crisis England followed exactly 
the precedent of 1870. On July 31 the British 
ambassadors at Paris and Berlin were instructed 
to ask for formal assurances that the neutrality 
of Belgium would be respected if war broke out.^ 
The question was obviously not, on this occasion, 
" superfluous in view of Germany's pledged word," 
since it was only two days before, on July 29, that 
the German Chancellor had made his " infamous 
proposal " that England should remain neutral 
while Germany attacked France through Belgium, 
on the understanding that if Belgium did not resist 
her integrity should be restored. The answers of 
the French and German governments were strik- 
ingly different. The French government immedi- 
ately gave the most complete and satisfactory as- 
surances.^ The German Foreign Secretary said 
that he could not reply without consulting the Em- 
peror and the Chancellor, but that he was " doubt- 
ful whether they would return any answer at all," 
as " any reply they might give could not but dis- 

^ British Blue Book, No. 114. 
'Ih, No. 125. 



32 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

dose a certain amount of their plan of cam- 
paign." ^ 

On the same day, July 31, the question was also 
being discussed in Brussels, where the German 
minister was asked whether Belgium might con- 
sider herself secure against an attack from Ger- 
many. He was reminded of two formal declara- 
tions made by the German Chancellor and Foreign 
Secretary in 191 1 and 191 3, in which they had 
asserted that Germany had no intention of violat- 
ing the neutrality of Belgium. His reply was that 
these assurances still held good.^ Both of these 
statements of 191 1 and 19 13, made while Germany 
was in the midst of her warlike preparations, were 
no doubt intended to prevent Belgium from, pre- 
paring to defend herself. The assurances of the 
minister on July 3 1 were clearly meant to lull Bel- 
gium into a false security up to the last moment. 
On August I the German government informed 
Luxemburg that she proposed to occupy her ter- 
ritory, and on August 2 her troops entered the 
capital, and the Luxemburg government sent its 
protest to the powers. On the same day, August 2, 
the same German minister at Brussels who had 
three days earlier assured Belgium that she was 
safe from attack, presented an ultimatum from his 
government ^ demanding free passage for German 
armies, and threatening to treat Belgium as an 
enemy if she refused. One wonders if the min- 

* British Blue Book, No. 122. 
' Belgian Grey Paper, No. 12. 
"lb. No. 20, 



THE SUMMER OF 1914 33 

ister blushed on presenting this note. Two days 
later German troops entered Belgian territory ; and 
the British government presented an ultimatum to 
Germany. At midnight on August 4, England and 
Germany were at war. 

Thus was perpetrated, with every refinement of 
treachery, what Mr. Gladstone in anticipation de- 
scribed as " the direst crime that ever stained the 
pages of history." It is not easy to find a parallel 
in modern history to the cynical effrontery of the 
two messages of the German minister at Brussels. 
One parallel only occurs readily to the mind. It 
is drawn from the history of Prussia. It is that 
episode in the history of the great hero of Prussian 
history, the Great King, as Germans proudly call 
him, when he lulled his intended victim. Queen 
Maria Theresa, into security by messages of friend- 
ship until he was ready to attack her territories 
which he was bound in honour to protect.^ But 
the Great King waited for three months. He has 
been outdone by the latest pupils in his school. 

The German government has, since the event, 
tried to manufacture excuses for its act. It 
asserted, in the first place, that the French were 
the first to take action, by sending dirigibles across 
the frontier.^ But when the Belgian minister, on 
being told of this, asked where it had happened, 
the answer was: "In Germany;'' to which the 
natural reply of the Belgian was that in that case 
he failed to understand the object of the com- 

' See below, Chap. III. 

^ Belgian Grey Paper, No. 21. 



34 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

munication! Yet this was the only justification 
offered to Belgium for the violation of her neu- 
trality. Again, it has been stated that the German 
government had certain proof that the French 
in^f ended to attack Germany through Belgium, and 
that therefore Germany had to act in self-defence ; 
but the proof has not been produced, and all we 
have to go upon is the declarations of the French 
and German governments on July 31. Finally, it 
has been pretended that Belgium had formed a 
secret league with France and England against 
Germany, and in support of this we have been told 
of a document, supposed to have been discovered 
in Brussels, wherein arrangements for the despatch 
of a British expeditionary force to Belgium were 
discussed. But this only shows that both Bel- 
gium and England believed before the war that 
there was a danger of a German attack, and had 
considered what should be done if such an attack 
took place. 

In reality Germany was not influenced by any 
of these considerations. Her true mind on the 
matter was expressed by her own chief minister, 
the Chancellor, in the Reichstag, on the outbreak 
of war. He acknowledged that Germany had com- 
mitted a crime against Belgium, but defended it 
on the plea of necessity, because Germany must 
" hack a way through," and promised that in the 
end Belgium should be compensated for the crime. 
The compensation has taken the form of the burn- 
ing of churches, towns and villages, the shooting 
of thousands of innocent non-combatants, the driv- 



THE SUMMER OF 1914 35 

ing out of thousands more to starvation in the 
woods or to exile in dependence on the charity 
of strangers : and finally it has taken the form of 
the annexation of the whole Belgian kingdom as 
a province of the German Empire. That may 
seem a boon to Germans: to other people incor- 
poration in a dishonoured nation seems the deepest 
insult of all. As for the " necessity " of " hacking 
a way through," we have already seen that the 
attack on Belgium did not lighten, but greatly 
increased, the military difficulties which Germany 
undertook. It increased the number of her ene- 
mies by drawing in England; it alienated honoura- 
ble men all over the world; it made it plain that 
the word of the German government as it is at 
present constituted can never again be trusted. 

It has been said, by some palliators of Ger- 
many's act, that after all the attack on Belgium 
was no worse than England's attack on neutral 
Denmark in 1807, when the Danes were ordered 
to surrender their whole fleet, and compelled by 
force to do so. Even if the parallel were exact, 
two black do not make a white. But the parallel 
is not exact. It is a not unimportant difference 
that England had never pledged her honour to 
maintain the neutrality of Deimiark. The English 
government had proofs, which history has accepted, 
that Napoleon (who was at this date, in alliance 
with Russia, master of the whole of Europe) in- 
tended to seize the Danish fleet for an attack on 
England. And there is a further and most sig- 
nificant difference. In the Danish case all parties 



36 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

in England who had not access to the secret in- 
formation of government united in condemning 
and deploring the deed. They could not, any 
more than the Germans can to-day, undo an act 
about which they were not consulted beforehand. 
But they could, and did, raise their protest.^ Sid- 
mouth, the High Tory, said bitterly that he began 
to despair of his country when he saw it " fighting 
Bonaparte with his own weapons — those of mere 
strength without right, and of temporary con- 
venience without regard to justice." Sheridan, 
the Whig, declared that Bonaparte would be de- 
lighted at seeing " our character blended with his 
own;" and many other leaders of all shades of 
opinion, in parliament, in correspondence, and in 
the press, expressed the same sense of shame and 
indignation. So far as is known not a single note 
of protest has been raised in Germany against the 
much more iniquitous violation of Belgium. It is 
indeed a piece of treachery without parallel in 
modern history. 

The war thus begun has been continued in the 
same spirit of shameless violation of treaty under- 
takings in regard to the rules of war. Germany 
has been a party to the acts of the Hague Con- 
ferences, whose object was so far as possible to 
mitigate the horrors of war, especially as they 
affect non-combatants. She has accepted these 
restrictions. And she has from the first deliber- 
ately and continuously violated them whenever 

* On this, see MacCunn, Contemporary English View of 
Napoleon, 1 15-16. 



THE SUMMER OF 1914 37 

it seemed to suit her convenience. We need not 
lay any emphasis upon the kind of charges that 
seem to recur in all modern wars, and to be made 
equally by both sides : the charges of using dum- 
dum bullets, firing on the Red Cross, treacherously 
misusing the white flag, and driving non-com- 
batants before the firing line. It is easy to see 
how these things might happen accidentally, though 
the evidence for the charge that women and chil- 
dren have been driven before the firing line has 
been strong and cumulative. But we may content 
ourselves with those deliberate offences against 
the Hague laws of war about which there is no 
dispute, and which Germany herself in many cases 
admits and even glories in. 

(i) It is among the provisions of the Hague 
Convention that in no case shall undefended 
** ports, towns, villages, habitations or buildings " 
be bombarded, and that a defended town shall 
only be bombarded as part of regular siege opera- 
tions, and after due notice given. The Goehen 
and the Breslau bombarded the open towns of 
Bona and Philippeville and the Emden Madras, 
without notice. The German army in Belgium 
bombarded the undefended towns of Louvain, 
Malines, Termonde, Dinant and other places, until 
they had reduced them to ruins. No notice was 
given before Zeppelins were sent under cover of 
the night to drop bombs, not on the forts, but in 
the civil quarters of Antwerp, in the hope of mur- 
dering a queen and her children, and with the 
result of killing a few helpless non-combatants. 



38 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

Aeroplanes have repeatedly sailed over Paris when 
the German army was sixty miles distant, and 
dropped bombs without notice — killing such use- 
less victims as an old solicitor and his grand- 
daughter on their way to church. 

(2) The first article of the Convention provides 
that the ordinary rules of war apply to all militia 
or volunteers if they wear a " fixed distinctive 
emblem*'; and the second article adds that the 
whole population of an invaded country may 
take up arms, and whether they wear uniforms 
or not, must be recognised as belligerents and 
treated accordingly. Germany has repudiated the 
first article by declining to recognise the Garde 
Civique of Brussels and other towns (who wear 
a uniform), and threatening to wreak vengeance 
for any resistance offered by them on the non- 
combatants of the community to which they belong. 
For the sake of the non-combatants these bodies 
had to be disbanded. She has repudiated the sec- 
ond article throughout the campaign in Belgium. 

(3) A further provision is that no community 
shall be made responsible for the acts of indi- 
viduals whom it is not in a position to control. 
The object of this provision seems to be primarily 
to deal with the difficulty created when unorgan- 
ised civilians fire on an invading army — a case that 
will always arise whenever a country is invaded, 
and citizens, with black despair at their hearts, 
see their homes and their fields occupied by a 
conquering enemy. The invading enemy must of 
course take measures for the protection of his 



THE SUMMER OF 1914 39 

soldiers. It seems to be agreed that, hard as the 
measure may seem, he may properly burn any 
house from which shots are fired, and shoot out 
of hand any civilian caught in the act of firing, 
or even in the possession of arms; though some 
nations, like the Americans during the Mexican 
trouble, have abstained even from these retaliations. 
But the Germans have gone far beyond this, and 
have continually, and evidently as a matter of 
fixed policy, disregarded the rule. In every village 
and town they have taken mayors, priests and 
others as hostages for the behaviour of their 
fellow-townsmen, whom they were quite unable 
to control, especially when locked up in gaol. They 
have shot these hostages as soon as a single shot 
was fired. They have shot also whole masses of 
townspeople, and forcibly and without enquiry de- 
ported masses more into slavery in Germany, on the 
ground that shots have been fired. They have 
burned down, not merely the houses from which 
shots were fired, but whole streets, and even whole 
towns. In the supreme case of Louvain they first 
disarmed the whole population, collecting even 
museum specimens of old weapons. Some German 
soldiers were shot after this — according to the 
weight of evidence, by their own comrades during 
a panic. Whether this was so or not, the subse- 
quent action of the German authorities was such as 
to stain the name of Germany for ever. Hundreds 
of innocent people were killed. Women and chil- 
dren were driven out in the night to wander where 
they would, many of them becoming the victims 



40 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

of the lust of a brutal soldiery. The men who 
were allowed to survive were taken away to un- 
known destinations, and kept for days without 
food or drink. The town, an ancient centre of 
culture, was first looted and then burnt ; and finally 
its buildings, including a great university library, 
were destroyed by a deliberate bombardment. Not 
even in the history of Prussia is there a parallel 
to this unspeakable crime. Tilly's sack of Magde- 
burg is nothing to it; Alaric's sack of Rome fades 
into insignificance beside it. It was reserved for 
the nation of " culture " in the twentieth century 
to surpass the worst records of barbarity of which 
history tells. And, a few years since, Germany 
pledged her honour that no community should be 
made responsible as a whole for acts committed 
by individual members of it ! 

(4) Two articles provide that the private prop- 
erty of non-combatants, and indeed all property 
other than that of the state, shall be respected, 
and that the only cash, funds and property which 
may be seized are those belonging strictly to the 
state save in case of military necessity. Another 
article prohibits the pillaging of " a town or place, 
even when taken by assault." The Germans, in 
every town which they have entered, have made 
straight for the banks and seized all the available 
cash, which is of course nearly all private prop- 
erty. Even in the places which they have treated 
best they have systematically given over to pillage 
all houses which had been deserted by their owners, 
and in many cases looting has been carried out on 



THE SUMMER OF 1914 4i 

a wholesale scale. At the Chateau of La Baye the 
Crown Prince himself condescended to loot the 
pictures and other valuables of the absent baroness. 
In every big town which they have occupied they 
have also demanded enormous ransoms, like the 
i8,ooo,ooo claimed from Brussels: apparently as 
indemnities for the non-performance of deeds of 
horror which Germany had pledged her honour not 
to commit. These ransoms are themselves a direct 
infraction of the Hague provisions; since they must 
necessarily be paid by private persons, they are 
only an indirect and convenient way of seizing 
private property. 

(5) A further article, while permitting requisi- 
tions in kind and services from the inhabitants of 
an occupied region, provides (a) that they shall be 
paid for, (b) that the requisitions shall be " in 
proportion to the resources of the country," and 
(c) that the services shall not be such as to com- 
pel the population to " take part in military opera- 
tions against their country." German requisitions 
have been so extortionate as to reduce the country 
to starvation; they have commonly either not been 
paid for at all, or in mock orders on French banks ; 
and the services demanded have included the dig- 
ging of trenches to be used against the labourers' 
fellow-countrymen. 

(6) Finally, Article 56 provides that all build- 
ings and properties devoted to religious, charitable 
or educational purposes shall be respected, even if 
they be government property; and all destruction 
or damage done to such institutions, to historical 



42 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAIN$T GERMANY 

monuments, and to works of art and science, is 
strictly prohibited. It is needless to labour the 
assertion that Germany has broken this article. 
Louvain, Malines and Rheims supply the answer, 
which might be multiplied a hundredfold. 

In all these ways, and in others as well, Ger- 
many has treated the Articles of the Hague, equally 
with the Belgian Neutrality Treaty, as so many 
scraps of paper. She has thus not only dishon- 
oured her own signature, and made it impossible 
to regard any treaties to which she may be a party 
as having any validity; she has undone all the 
advance that humanity has made in regulating and 
moderating the brutalities of war. For, try as 
they will, it is almost impossible for the Allies to 
resist the temptation of following the German ex- 
ample in some, though not in the worst, respects. 
It may well seem to them that the best way of 
checking German aerial raids on Belgian, French 
or English towns is to carry out raids against 
German towns: hitherto these raids have been 
limited to the destruction of Zeppelin sheds. 
Money being the sinews of war, if Germany is 
to be allowed to carry off £25,000,000 of ransom 
from the lands she has violated, the Allies may 
well feel that if the opportunity comes to them they 
will not be justified in not inflicting the same meas- 
ures upon German towns. And what then becomes 
of the Hague articles ? 

There is only one way in which the validity of 
these provisions, made by the common consent 
of the civilised world, can be maintained. It is 



THE SUMMER OF 1914 43 

that the neutral countries should undertake an 
enquiry into all charges of breaches of these agree- 
ments; should require not only a cessation of such 
breaches, where they are proved, but a compensa- 
tion for them wherever possible; and should, on 
refusal, make themselves the avengers of under- 
standings to which they are themselves parties. 
But apparently no such action will be taken, and 
the work of the Hague Conferences will be allowed 
to go by the board. 

There is, of course, no doubt as to the reason 
for Germany's action in these respects. It is not 
dictated by passion, by sheer wicked delight in 
destruction and tyranny, though these passions 
must by this time have been effectually unchained 
among the worse of her soldiery. But, for her 
leaders, it is a matter of deliberate and calculated y 
policy — as calculated as the tearing up of the 
original, the Belgian, scrap of paper. The object 
is to inspire terror, in the spirit of the Kaiser's 
famous allocution to his troops when they went 
out to China. The country through which the 
German armies pass is to be so cowed that its 
citizens, however deep the loathing and contempt 
they may feel for their conquerors, will not dare 
to raise a hand against them. This policy has its 
military convenience. It enables the conquered 
country to be held by a smaller body of troops. It 
makes the lines of communication safer. A patri- 
otic Belgian, burning with rage and sorrow for his 
suffering country, might be tempted to blow up a 
railway tunnel, or block a line. If he knows that 



44 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

the result will be the burning of every house in 
the nearest village, the murder of his male rela- 
tives, and the driving of his wife and children out 
into starvation on the roads, he will hesitate. The 
policy has another use. It is an inspiring example 
for other little nations, such as Holland, which 
might be tempted to be guilty of the insolence of 
resisting the occupation of their countries when 
that seemed useful for the cause of culture: they 
know what to expect. Oh, it is a useful policy. 
y But it is the policy of Hell. And since a God 

of Justice rules the Universe, it will not go 
unpunished. 

These, then, are the three counts in the indict- 
ment against Germany: (i) This war, the most 
horrible in human history, was forced on by 
Germany. (2) She has planned and prepared it 
for years, and it is for her a war of scarcely 
disguised greed and aggression. (3) It has been 
carried out in a way that forever dishonours the 
German state, and displays it as the foe of all 
that is noblest in human civilisation. It is for 
the reader to consider whether these three points 
have been established. 



CHAPTER II 

GERMAN POLITICAL THEORIES 

'T^HE series of events described in the last 
-*• chapter, and the extraordinary revelations 
they have brought as to the aims and methods 
of one of the great European powers, have come 
upon us so suddenly that many people have a 
dazed and bewildered feeling. They can scarcely 
grasp, and they cannot credit, the full horror of 
this revelation. Men who have known and loved 
Germany and the Germans, who have studied 
under the great masters of learning in the German 
universities, whose souls have been uplifted by 
the harmonies of Beethoven and of Wagner, who 
have recognised in Kant and Hegel the deepest 
minds of modern philosophy, who have reverenced 
the serene humanity of Goethe — such men, and 
they are many, and among the best, in all coun- 
tries, find it incredible that such actions and such 
a policy as we have described should have come 
from Germany; and that the spirit which inspires 
these actions and that policy should have taken 
possession of the minds of the German people, or 
even of their rulers. Yet it cannot be doubted that 
in some degree this tragedy has happened. How 
is it to be explained ? 

In part, perhaps, it is the outcome of the ex- 



46 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

traordinary self-satisfaction and self-assertiveness 
which has so much grown upon the Germans dur- 
ing the last generation. Most people who have 
had much to do with Germans have found this 
temper of theirs very hard to put up with — this 
assumption, always implicit and sometimes explicit 
in their conversation, that there is only one great 
nation in the world, and that the German nation; 
and that whatever is German is altogether won- 
derful and perfect, whatever comes from other 
nations unimportant and doomed to disappear. It 
it is an irritating habit of mind, but perhaps the 
Englishman and the American have less reason 
than most people for being actively annoyed with 
it, since they are not wholly free from it them- 
selves. And this rather arrogant self-complacency 
of the German has some justification, for the 
achievements of Germany in the last half-century 
have been really marvellous. 

Fifty years ago Germany was a much-divided 
nation. Her scholars were the greatest in the 
world, but she played an unimportant part in the 
world's politics as compared with France, Eng- 
land or Russia; she was still a poor country, and 
counted for little in commerce and industry. A 
single half -century has brought about an amazing 
transformation. 

Germany, or rather her chief state, Prussia, 
fought three great wars, two of them against the 
then leading powers of the continent, Austria and 
France. In each case she beat her foes to their 
knees in a few weeks, and Europe had sud- 



GERMAN POLITICAL THEORIES 47 

denly to adjust herself to the conception that this 
hitherto almost negligible nation had become the 
most formidable military power in the world. The 
ease with which these wars were won naturally 
persuaded the German that he was unconquerable, 
and unapproachable as a soldier; he is scarcely to 
be blamed for not giving weight to the special cir- 
cumstances which made these victories so easy. 
The enormous gains they brought to him nat- 
urally persuaded him that his national welfare 
depended wholly upon his army and its captains. 
For these victories brought the unity of Ger- 
many. And, once united, Germany proceeded with 
extraordinary rapidity to assert for herself suc- 
cessfully a first place in every aspect of life. Her 
scholars (to whom, as she recognised, her triumph 
was due almost as much as to her soldiers) were 
still the leaders of European learning; and if In 
recent years they have hardly held so unapproach- 
able an ascendancy as formerly — if German learn- 
ing, like other aspects of German life, has been 
somewhat materialised by success, and thinks too 
much of results, and not so much as it once did 
of pure truth — ^yet no one will deny their eminence 
in many branches of learning. The perfection of 
her organisation and administration attracted the 
admiration of the world. No other country's towns 
were so well laid out, so well equipped with the 
means of a civilised life; no other nation managed 
its forests, its rivers, its railways so scientifically; 
no other nation had such a logical and efficient 
system of education; no other nation had made 



48 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

such elaborate and scientific provision against the 
distresses of the poor. Finally her commerce and 
industry advanced with unparalleled rapidity. 
Negligible fifty years ago, she now leads the world 
in several industries, and holds her own in nearly 
all. Her ships, some of the finest in existence, are 
to be seen in every sea. Her wealth has attained 
colossal dimensions. 

Is it wonderful that the German citizen is com- 
placent about the greatness and destinies of his 
country, that he thinks of her as the rightful mis- 
tress of the world? But self-complacency is a 
dangerous state of mind: it lays its subject open 
to many pernicious moral germs. Again, is it 
wonderful that the average German citizen should 
feel a real loyalty to the system of government 
which has brought about these astonishing results, 
and that he should accept with docility and with- 
out much criticism the ideas on which that govern- 
ment has been conducted ? Though he has a repre- 
sentative parliament, or Reichstag, the German has 
been quite content to leave effective power out 
of the hands of the Reichstag, and in the hands 
of the forces which have wielded it so brilliantly 
in the past — the Hohenzollern monarchy, with its 
two pillars, the military Junker nobility on the 
right hand, and the strict industrious, unsympa- 
thetic Prussian bureaucracy on the left. " The Ger- 
man," says Prince Biilow, " has always accom- 
plished his greatest works under strong, steady 
and firm guidance. . . . No nation submits so will- 
ingly to discipline." For that reason, perhaps, it 



GERMAN POLITICAL THEORIES 49 

is that he is ready even to leave his political con- 
science in the hands of his traditional rulers; and 
that his public opinion is " an orchestra which 
answers only to the baton of the government." 
For that reason, no doubt, it is that his government 
has found it so easy to " mobilise " this opinion ; 
to control and direct it, without open or tyran- 
nical interference; through the press, and above all 
through the universities. 

The universities have long been in Germany a 
department of the state; and in a subtle and im- 
perceptible way, they have been almost an organ 
of government. Professors get their appoint- 
ments from the state; and one sure way for a 
professor to recommend himself to public notice 
and to win promotion is (without neglecting his 
scholarly labours) to make himself a trumpet for 
the glorification of modern Germany and an 
exponent of its wider political aims. The political 
professor has an influence in Germany which is 
quite without parallel in any other country. Even 
in the days of her weakness, he was the great 
preacher of the German national idea, of German 
pride and hopes. To-day, and for a long time 
past, he has been perhaps the most effective im- 
plement in that " mobilisation of public opinion " 
of which we have already spoken as being an 
essential part of the German system of government. 

But the German's self-complacency, his certi- 
tude of the rightness of all things German, his 
general docility to his government, and his 
readiness to let his opinions be "mobilised," are 



so BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

not sufficient to explain the products we have 
analysed in the last chapter. They only help to 
explain why he falls an easy prey to the ideas 
accepted by his government. 

What poison has been at work in the German 
mind to produce these results? What is the 
body of ideas that has found its terrible expres- 
sion in the events of the last few months? 
Whence do these ideas spring? How far are 
they, consciously or unconsciously, accepted by 
the mass of the German people, or by its ruling 
classes and its intellectual leaders? These are 
questions of no mere academic interest. They are 
of vital importance to the future of Europe and 
of civilisation, in which this nation has played, 
and must always play, so great a part. 

During the last few weeks all England has 
been reading a remarkable book, which appears 
to give some answer to our questions. The 
author is an officer of high rank in the Prussian 
army. General von Bernhardi, and his book ^ claims 
to set out not only the military problems of Ger- 
many, but her political programme, and the funda- 
mental ideas by which these are governed. When 
the book was first published, in 19 ii, not much 
notice was taken of it in England. Its under- 
lying conceptions were so repellent to the English 
mind, the political programme which it suggested 
seemed so cynical, that those who read it were 
inclined to dismiss it as an irresponsible and ex- 

* " Germany and the Next War." By F. von Bernhardi, 
(Longmans, Green & Co.). 



GERMAN POLITICAL THEORIES Si 

tremist publication, like many that appear in all 
countries; it seemed absurd and unjust to take it 
as representing in any degree the considered judg- 
ment and policy of Germany or her rulers. Even 
now many people think that the emphasis which 
has been laid on Bernhardi's book is unjust to the 
German people. 

Yet one cannot but feel that a General in the 
most strictly disciplined army of the world is not 
likely to issue with impunity a work which pro- 
fesses to describe the principles and policy of his 
country, but vilely slanders- them. And when we 
learn that the Crown Prince of Prussia has recom- 
mended the book as one which every good German 
should read and study; and when we find that in 
the most uncanny way almost everything that 
Bernhardi says finds direct confirmation and illus- 
tration in the diplomacy and in the warfare of this 
summer, it becomes more and more difiicult to 
treat the book lightly. Moreover the date of its 
publication is very significant. It appeared in 
1911, just at the beginning of that three years' 
strenuous preparation for war which we have al- 
ready described. The German people had to be 
persuaded to accept the extraordinary series of 
Army Acts and Navy Votes which have marked 
these years, and to assume the burden of the vast 
expenditure which these acts involved. Is it not 
possible, and even likely, that this book is part of 
that process of mobilising public opinion which 
the German government knows so well how to 
conduct, and which Bismarck never neglected on 



52 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

the eve of his carefully planned wars? If that 
is so, Bernhardi becomes a document of the first 
importance, and demands respectful treatment. 

Though Bernhardi's style is involved and 
verbose, and his thinking often confused, there is 
no mistaking his aim and his main contentions. 
In his preface (dated October, 191 1, after the 
first Army Act had been passed) he speaks con- 
temptuously of the Reichstag's fondness for 
" haggling about war contribdtions," and adds 
" these conditions have induced me now to publish 
the following pages.'' His book is in the main 
an argument for an immense and immediate in- 
crease of the military forces of Germany, in 
preparation for a great war which is certain to 
come soon. " We must strive," he says, " to call 
up the entire force of the nation " ; ^ and it is 
hard to avoid the conclusion that his book was 
designed to prepare the way for the second and 
third Army Acts, which were so soon to follow 
the first. For this purpose it was necessary to 
combat the dangerous love of peace which was 
" undermining the warlike spirit of the people " ; ^ 
and the book is an argument designed to this 
end. 

He begins by singing the praises of War. It 
is not merely a painful and sometimes unavoidable 
necessity; it is in itself a good thing, and "the 
basis of all healthy development " ; ^ it is " a moral 
necessity " * demanded by " political idealism " and 



% (( 



Germany and the Next War" (English trans.), 154. 
' lb. 9. " lb. 18. * lb. 26. 



GERMAN POLITICAL THEORIES 53 

prescribed by Nature herself, who has ordained 
that by war alone shall the fit be sorted out from 
the unfit, and progress be made possible. For 
that reason it is not merely the right, but the duty, 
of every state to make war ^ because " it cannot 
attain its great moral ends unless its political 
power increases/' ^ Strong states have a right, 
because of their strength, to overcome weak states, 
which ought to go to the wall. " Might is the 
supreme right, and war gives a biologically just 
decision/' ® Do you say that this is an overriding 
of right? But who is to say w/^aiHs right ? Only 
the state: there is no power above the state, no 
right inconsistent with its interests.* Do you say 
this is a contradiction of Christianity, which is 
based on the law of love? The law of love has 
nothing to do with the relations between one state 
and another, but is limited to the relations be- 
tween the citizens of an individual state: if you 
apply Christianity to politics you will have " a 
conflict of duties." Since Christ Himself said " I 
am not come to send peace on earth but a sword " 
we ought to approve of war ; ^ and " efforts 
directed towards the abolition of war must be 
termed not only foolish but absolutely immoral, 
and unworthy of the human race." ® We must 
realise that " the maintenance of peace never can 
or may be the goal of a policy." ^ 

Now " the acts of the state cannot be judged 

^ " Germany and the Next War," Chap. II, passim, 
'lb. 26. 'lb. 23. * lb. 21. 'lb. 29. 

'lb. 34- '1^.37- 



54 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

by the standard of individual morality '* : the 
'* morality of the state must be judged by its own 
nature and purpose; and the be-all and end-all of 
a state is Power." ^ It is therefore its right and 
duty to make war whenever it sees a chance of 
increasing its power. Of course it should choose 
a favourable moment. A state should always make 
war (i) when it finds that its rivals seem likely 
to become stronger than itself in military resources, 
or (2) when its rivals are " weakened or hampered 
by affairs at home or abroad.'' ^ It is a crime in a 
statesman not to seize such opportunities. The im- 
portance of deliberately and aggressively making 
war for the purpose of increasing the state's power 
is illustrated by a survey of German history; and 
this survey shows that all Germany's greatness has 
been created by war. 

Bernhardi next sets himself to show that Ger- 
many needs war at the present time. She needs it 
to complete her unity, because many Germans, such 
as the Dutch and Swiss, are outside of the limits of 
her Empire, while the source and mouth of the 
great German river, the Rhine, are outside of Ger- 
man territory.^ She needs it because she is the 
leader of the world in Culture, and her " historical 
mission " impels her to impose her culture on the 
world ; * "the dominion of German thought can 
only be extended under the aegis of political power, 
and unless we act in conformity with this idea, we 
shall be untrue to our great duties to the human 

* " Germany and the Next War," 45. 

» lb. 52, 53. « Ih. 76. * Ih. Chap. IV. 



GERMAN POLITICAL THEORIES 55 

race." ^ It appears therefore that Germany's ex- 
alted " historical mission " involves the subjuga- 
tion of the world, in order that German culture may 
be forced upon it. Finally Germany needs war 
(and this seems to be the most important reason, 
since it is constantly returned to) ^ because she 
needs colonies to supply her with raw materials, 
markets, and homes for her surplus population 
where they will not lose their nationality. Ger- 
many did not enter the circle of the great powers 
until late, " when the partition of the globe was 
concluded." Therefore '' what we now wish to at- 
tain must be fought for and won, against a superior 
force of hostile interests and powers." ^ For Ger- 
many the moment is at hand. It is for her an 
alternative between world-power and downfall.* 
" We now must decide whether we wish to develop 
into and maintain a World Empire . . . Are we 
prepared to make the sacrifices which such an effort 
will cost ? . . . To be, or not to be, is the question 
which is put to us to-day.'' '^ " We cannot under 
any circumstances avoid fighting for our position 
in the world, and the all-important point is, not to 
postpone that war as long as possible, but to bring 
it on under the most favourable conditions pos- 
sible." « 

^ " Germany and the Next War," 77. 

* e.g., lb. 103, 107, 108. 

' lb. 84. 

*Ib. Chap. V. 

' lb. 104. It is worth noting that this same quotation was 
used by the Kaiser in one of his first speeches after the 
outbreak of war. 

'lb. 112. 



56 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

But who are the enemies against whom this 
righteous and necessary war is to be so soon waged, 
for iworld-power and the ascendancy of German 
culture? Bernhardi has no doubts on this point. 
Germany will have to fight the Triple Entente, all 
the members of which are for various reasons natu- 
ral enemies. Russia represents the Slav Peril,^ the 
danger of advancing barbarism, but about this 
Bernhardi does not trouble much. As for France 
" our political condition would be considerably con- 
solidated if we could finally get rid of the standing 
danger that France will attack us on a favourable 
occasion.'' ^ Therefore " France must be so com- 
pletely crushed that she can never again come 
across our path." ^ But that is to be only a means 
to an end — a means of getting " a free hand in our 
international policy." The supreme object of Ger- 
man attack, in Bernhardi's opinion, is England, 
with her scattered and highly desirable colonies. 
" A pacific agreement with England is, after all, 
a will-o'-the-wisp which no serious German states- 
man would trouble to follow. We must always 
keep the possibility of war with England before our 
eyes, and arrange our political and military plans 
accordingly." * " Even English attempts at a 
rapprochement must not blind us to the real 
situation. We may at most use them to delay the 
necessary and inevitable war until we may fairly 
imagine we have some prospect of success." ^ In 
this connexion it is significant to remember that 

' " Germany and the Next War," 92. ' Ih. 105. 
•/&. 106. */6. 99. 'Ih. 287. 



GERMAN POLITICAL THEORIES 57. 

duringf the last two years the German Chancellor 
and the German press have been proclaiming the 
increasing friendliness of England and Germany. 
Bemhardi believes that the British Empire is 
collapsing/ that her greater colonies are looking 
forward to separation/ and that she is gravely 
threatened by the nationalist movements in India 
and Egypt,® while her commercial prosperity is be- 
ing undermined by America and Germany.* Eng- 
land made, he thinks, an " unpardonable blunder " 
in not seizing the chance presented by the American 
Civil War to ruin the United States by supporting 
the Southern States ^ ; and he suggests the moral 
that other countries should not be guilty of the 
same kind of mistake. Nevertheless he recognises 
that England is not an easy country to attack, since 
she " indisputably rules the sea." ^ He devotes a 
chapter to '* The Next Naval War "; it is a war be- 
tween Germany and England, and he outlines the 
plan which has actually been adopted of keeping 
the main fleet behind forts and mines while trying 
to wear down English preponderance by means of 
submarines and airships.^ But he obviously does 
not think this plan presents much chance of success. 
He prefers to pin his faith, in the first place, to 
political intrigues. Turkey might be very useful in 
stirring up an anti-English Mohammedan move- 
ment in Egypt and India.® The friendship of 

' " Germany and the Next War," 97. 

' lb. 96. 

» lb. 95. * lb. 94. ' lb. 94. » lb. 102. 

'lb. Chap. VIII. 

" lb. 148. 



58 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

America should be cultivated, for she is obviously 
England's commercial rival, and all the talk of 
peace and arbitration between these two powers 
is obviously only hypocritical nonsense.^ Italy 
(though Bernhardi feels that she has practically 
withdrawn from the Triple Alliance,^ and would 
probably remain neutral) might be influenced by 
playing on her fears of British supremacy in the 
Mediterranean.^ Even Russia might be separated 
from her by a skilful use of the divergent interests 
of these two powers in Persia.* But when all is 
said, " we cannot count on an ultimate victory at 
sea unless we are victorious on land.'* ^ Therefore 
the first step to the overthrow of England must be 
a continental victory; and that is what makes the 
strengthening of the German armies so important. 
Bernhardi accordingly surveys with great care 
the forces with which Germany will have to deal. 
He calculates that the French can produce 
about 2,300,000 good fighting men, and perhaps 
1,250,000 second grade troops.^ She can also 
bring across 120,000 Turcos from Algeria. In 
time she may be able greatly to increase the num- 
ber of her African troops : ^ that is obviously a 
reason for attacking her before she has time to do 
so. Russia has vast numbers of men, but cannot 
possibly bring into the western field of war more 
than about 2,000,000.® England can send an ex- 
peditionary force of 130,000 men to the Continent, 

* " Germany and the Next War," 17. 

" Ih. 168. ' lb. 89. * lb. 94, 282, 288. » lb. 167. 

«/&. 131. 'lb. 132. 'lb. 135. 



GERMAN POLITICAL THEORIES 59 

but no more/ Her Territorials cannot be used 
abroad. Her Indian army will have its hands full 
in keeping down Indian revolt. As for the British 
colonies, they have nothing but militia, and for the 
purposes of European warfare may be " completely 
ignored." ^ Such are the land forces with which 
Germany will have to deal. As to the forces she 
will have at her disposal, Bernhardi gives some 
vague statements, showing that he counts upon the 
active alliance of Austria and Turkey, but holds it 
" undesirable to state " how many men Germany 
and her allies can put into the field. ^ But he as- 
sumes that Germany will be outnumbered, and 
therefore that it is necessary for her to arm and 
train her whole manhood.* But that will not be 
enough. " We must devise other means of gaining 
the upper hand of our enemies. These means can 
only be found in the spiritual domain.*' ^ Bern- 
hardi does not explain exactly what he means by 
these " spiritual " factors, which seem curiously 
out of keeping with the war of undisguised aggres- 
sion he is advocating. He only says that the Ger- 
mans must " win superiority in the factors upon 
which the ultimate decision turns. . . . This must 
secure for us the spiritual and so the material ad- 
vantage over our enemies." ® From this it would 
appear that these " spiritual " factors may be 17- 
inch Krupp guns, Zeppelin airships, and the policy 
of terrorism. 

* " Germany and the Next War," 136. 

»/&. 135. "/&. 137. */&. 154. ''/&. 170. 

'lb. 171. 



6o BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

Bemhardi does not discuss the plans of the com- 
ing land campaign with the same frankness with 
which he discusses the plans of sea warfare. But 
he gives one significant indication. Although he 
lays it down that Germany must strike the first 
blow, so as to have the advantage of the initiative, 
and although he admits in one place that England 
is never likely to initiate an attack on Germany 
through fear of disturbing her trade, he chooses to 
assume during the greater part of his argument 
that the enemies of Germany will be the aggressors 
— no doubt as a concession to traders and pacifists. 
And, speaking from this point of view, he lays it 
down as obvious that England and France will at- 
tack Germany through Holland and Belgium, not 
hesitating to violate the neutrality of these two 
states.^ From this it is safe to conclude that a 
violation of the neutrality of one or both of these 
states would be in his judgment the natural mode 
of opening the campaign. And, as if preparing in 
advance for the attack on Belgium, he raises the 
question " whether all the treaties which were con- 
cluded at the beginning of the last century under 

quite other conditions can, or ought to be 

permanently observed. When Belgium was pro- 
claimed neutral no one contemplated that she would 
lay claim to a large and valuable region of Africa. 
It may well be asked whether the acquisition of 
such territory is not ipso facto a breach of neu- 
trality ! " ^ It would be hard to imagine a weaker, 

^^ " Germany and the Next War," 158. 
» lb. no. 



GERMAN POLITICAL THEORIES 6i 

or a more cynical, ground for repudiating a for- 
mally assumed obligation. Bernhardi does not say 
why Germany, when she consented to the establish- 
ment of the Congo Free State, failed to raise this 
point. But its only interest is the significant anxi- 
ety which it shows to find beforehand an excuse for 
disregarding the neutrality treaty. The German 
Chancellor did not condescend to use this argu- 
ment. He was content to say that Germany must 
" hack a way through." 

But whatever her means, and whatever her plan 
of campaign, the essential thing according to Bern- 
hardi is that Germany should realise, in 1911, that 
she must strike soon and with all her power for 
World-might. " The period which destiny has al- 
lotted to us for concentrating our forces and pre- 
paring for the deadly struggle may soon be passed. 
We must use it . . . This is the point of view from 
which we must carry out our preparations for war 
by sea and land." ^ And the Army Acts and Navy 
Votes of 191 2 and 191 3 followed. 

Such, in outline, is the essence of Bernhardi*s 
book. A more frankly cynical programme of na- 
tional aggression has seldom or never been openly 
set forth; and if (as we are inclined to conclude 
from the date and circumstances of its publication, 
from the high imprimatur which it received, and 
from the closeness with which it reflects the sub- 
sequent course of events alike in warlike prepara- 
tion, in diplomacy and in actual warfare) it is to 
be regarded as a semi-official presentation of the 
* " Germany and the Next War," 168. 



62 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

programme of the German government, the book, 
poor as it is in quality, deserves the attention we 
have given it. 

If Bernhardi's book stood alone, or if it had 
been in any way repudiated by the German gov- 
ernment or press, no doubt we should scarcely be 
justified in taking it as an indication of the temper 
of the German people or their government. But 
it does not stand alone. Indeed, the only new and 
significant things in Bernhardi are his careful cal- 
culation of the forces with which Germany had to 
deal, his assertion that in 19 ii the moment was at 
hand when she must either take a bold attitude of 
aggression or fall into the second rank of powers, 
and his demand that she must at once enter upon 
just such a period of active concentration of her 
whole strength upon military preparations as filled 
the years between the publication of the book and 
the outbreak of the war. The ideas, the funda- 
mental political theory and the view of the nature 
of Germany's real interests, upon which these con- 
clusions are based and from which they are merely 
corollaries, have been the commonplaces of a large 
school of political thought in Germany for years 
past. Indeed, Bernhardi' s statements and pro- 
posals are moderate in comparison with the publica- 
tions of the group of Leagues and Unions whose 
activity has been one of the main features of Ger- 
man politics for a number of years past. 

The most important of these is the Navy 
League, with an enormous membership which in- 
cludes thousands of school teachers. The Navy 



GERMAN POLITICAL THEORIES 63 

League has been under the direct patronage of 
Admiral von Tirpitz, who has long been, as Secre- 
tary of the Navy, perhaps the most powerful mem- 
ber of the German government. He sees Chancel- 
lors and Foreign Secretaries come and go, but 
himself remains unshakeable. The creator (with 
the Kaiser) of the modern German navy, he may 
also be fairly regarded as the steadiest advocate of 
the policy for which the navy has been built up. 
But the Navy League does not stand alone. There 
has also been an Army League, whose duty was to 
create a public opinion favourable to the increase 
of the army. Above all, there has been a Pan- 
Germanist League, whose objects have been, firstly 
by means of schools and other methods to organise 
the bodies of Germans settled in other countries 
(especially in South America) as distinct com- 
munities conscious of their nationality; secondly, 
to keep alive the demand that the so-called dis- 
united fragments of " Greater Germany " — Hol- 
land, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria and the Baltic 
provinces of Russia — should be reunited to the 
" parent " state; and in general to awaken Im- 
perialist sentiment. Now and again, when its 
clamours were too loud, as during the various 
stages of the Morocco controversy, the Pan-Ger- 
manist League has been checked by the govern- 
ment. But it has played its part in that " orchestra 
of public opinion " which government is generally 
so well able to control : over-emphasis of the drums 
in the Deutschlcmd uber dies symphony might spoil 
the progressive development of the theme, but that 



64 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

is not to say that there is not a place for drums in 
the orchestra. All these Leagues have, in their 
various ways, been preaching for years the doc- 
trines of which Bernhardi gives the latest exposi- 
tion. 

What is more important, the fundamental ideas 
of Bernhardi are really implicit, and sometimes 
tolerably explicit, in the work of that remarkable 
group of historians known as the Prussian School, 
who played so great a part in the history not only 
of German learning but of German political thought 
during the last half of the nineteenth century. 
Droysen, Sybel and the rest quite consciously de- 
voted their great learning and powers of present- 
ment, not only in numerous pamphlets, but in their 
most ambitious historical works, to the propaga- 
tion of a political cause: the glorification of the 
Prussian state as the destined means for winning 
first German unity and then German supremacy. 
As Germany is a country which (unlike England) 
reads and is influenced by big books, and venerates 
the dicta of men of learning, the Prussian school of 
historians unquestionably contributed in a large 
measure to the triumph of Bismarck's work; and 
since most of them placed patriotism above learn- 
ing (arnica Veritas sed magis arnica Germania), 
most of them would probably be consoled by that 
fact for the rapid disenthronement of their work — 
the disenthronement which inevitably comes to all 
who work at history to prove a case, or to serve a 
cause, or for any reason other than the love of 
truth. In the process of justifying every action of 



GERMAN POLITICAL THEORIES 65 

the conquering Hohenzollern princes which their 
theory thrust upon them, they were forced to exalt 
as justifiable and even virtuous actions many deeds 
(for example of Frederick the Great) which the 
stern judgment of history unhesitatingly condemns; 
and since the greatness of Prussia had been built 
up essentially by brute force and the frequent dis- 
regard of treaty obligations, they laid the founda- 
tions of that political philosophy which has found 
its most recent exposition in Bernhardi. 

Incomparably the greatest of the Prussian school 
of historians was Heinrich von Treitschke. This 
irritable, eloquent, leonine man, whose sympathies 
were always with strong and downright action, 
would have been a soldier if deafness had not 
driven him to be a Professor. He fought for 
Germany as single-heartedly in the Professorial 
chair as ever he could have done in the trenches ; 
Ranke, the apostle of unbiassed history, regretted 
the appointment of so vehement a partisan at Ber- 
lin. But during the twenty-two years for which he 
held his Berlin professorship (1874 — 1896) he ex- 
ercised an astonishing ascendancy. His lecture 
theatre was crowded not only by students, but by 
princes, soldiers, diplomats and administrators. 
He was the teacher and inspirer of the ruling 
classes of Germany, in the headquarters of Prussia. 
The influence which was exercised by his books has 
been compared to the combined influence of Carlyle 
and Macaulay in England, but in the magnetic 
power which he wielded by the spoken as well as 
the written word, not only in the lecture-room but 



66 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

in the Reichstag, there was something which 
neither Carlyle nor even Macaulay fully shared. 
His work has never been well known out of Ger- 
many; even his greatest work, the '' History of 
Germany in the Nineteenth Century," which by 
reason of its vivid eloquence ranks among the great- 
est historical works of the age, has never been 
translated into English. The reason is obvious. 
He writes not primarily as a historian, but as the 
hymner and prophet of Germany— -of Germany 
united, disciplined and controlled by Prussia, and 
setting forth under this leadership to the conquest 
of the world. Over against Prussia and Germany 
all other nations seem to him hateful or contempt- 
ible : and the most hateful, the most contemptible of 
them all was treacherous, greedy, hypocritical Eng- 
land, whose name he could scarcely allow to pass 
without a scornful epithet. For England, in the 
days of German weakness, had got for herself, by 
tricks and cunning, that lordship of the outer world 
which of right belonged to Germany's strong sword. 
As much a poet as a historian, Treitschke filled the 
mind of modem Germany with pride in her past, 
but also with a fierce pride in her greater future ; 
and in the history of the Prussian state he pointed 
out to her the weapons she would have to wield 
in order to conquer this future. 

Treitschke did not only lecture, or write, on his- 
torical subjects: he lectured and wrote on political 
theory, and the doctrines which he expounded were 
essentially a translation into theory of the practice 
of the Prussian state, as it had been exemplified 



GERMAN POLITICAL THEORIES e?, 

by the Great Elector, by Frederick the Great, and 
by Bismarck. This pohtical theory is embodied in 
two volumes of lectures on Die Politik; and this 
book is the direct source of Bernhardi's theories. 
Treitschke is one of the half-dozen writers whom 
Bernhardi quotes; another is Clausewitz, the classi- 
cal exponent of Prussian theories of war. But 
where Clausewitz is quoted once, Treitschke is 
quoted twenty times. A citation from him clinches 
every argument ; he is referred to as " our national 
historian"; he is appealed to as a final authority, 
as if Die Politik was the very Bible of German 
political doctrine. 

It is needless to analyse in detail the teaching 
of this remarkable book, because we have already 
reviewed it in the cruder form which it takes in 
the hands of Bernhardi. The supreme fact in the 
history of man, according to Treitschke, is the ex- 
istence of the state; there is nothing in the world 
higher than the state, and therefore no vague claims 
of " humanity'' or " civilisation " at large can be 
ranked above it. The highest moral obligation of 
the state is its own preservation, and the mainte- 
nance and extension of its power. For the state is 
power; power, and not justice or freedom, is its 
raison d'etre. What justifies and ennobles the 
power of the state is that its existence renders pos- 
sible the existence, and its growth the growth, of 
culture. But the culture which the state ought to 
extend is not culture in general, but the special and 
peculiar culture developed within its own limits. 
The natural means by which the state pursues 



68 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

power and the extension of its culture is war, which 
is the highest function of the state. War is the 
great healer, because it keeps alive the corporate 
spirit of the citizen and his readiness to sacrifice 
himself for the greatness of his state: the living 
God will see to it that war will always recur as a 
terrible medicine for humanity. It is the law of 
nature, a biological necessity, the sure means of 
securing progress; for the state which proves its 
virility by victory in war is the state whose culture 
deserves to survive. It follows that only great and 
strong states, able to protect themselves and their 
culture by their own force, are of any value. Little 
states are mischievous, because they must live in a 
state of fear, and therefore cannot develop a virile 
culture ; the law of progress in history is that little 
states should be swallowed up by big states. Al- 
though the state itself is the only source of any law 
that has really binding force, there is room for a 
kind of international law, a set of rules constructed 
on the principle of give-and-take among great states 
of equal strength. But the validity of this inter- 
national law is only relative. It cannot stand in the 
way of the self-preservation of the state, or of 
its power, because these are its highest moral duties. 
A state cannot bind its own will for the future. 
Treaties, therefore, into which the state has entered 
are only valid rebus sic stantibus, when the condi- 
tions remain unchanged, that is, while the treaties 
form no impediment to the self-preservation, 
power, or culture of the state. And as there is no 
power higher than the state, the state itself is the 



GERMAN POLITICAL THEORIES 69 

sole judge as to whether its earlier treaties do or 
do not form impediments to its self-preservation, 
power and culture. The one unpardonable sin in a 
state, the political sin against the Holy Spirit, is 
feebleness : feebleness in pursuing power, the pur- 
suit of which is the highest moral duty ; feebleness 
in allowing itself to be tied by treaties which, what- 
ever may have been the case at the time they were 
made, are no longer favourable to the state's power. 
Such, in brief paraphrase, is the essential doctrine 
of Treitschke. It will be obvious how directly it 
is echoed, not only in Bernhardi, but in the 
action of the German state during the summer of 

1914. 

The kind of doctrines which we have been ana- 
lysing are often spoken of by modern Germans 
as Realpolitik — the politics that faces facts as 
they are, that deals in realities and does not allow 
itself to be cozened by untrue sentimentalisms. 
Treitschke somewhere lauds Frederick the Great, 
his hero, as above all a man of truth. The phrase 
seems startling as applied to the most cynical 
breaker of treaties in modern history; but what it 
means is that the Great King was not taken in by 
shams, and made no hypocritical pretences : he pur- 
sued power and his own exclusive interests by all 
means available, like everybody else; but he made 
no pretence to conceal the fact. And one of the 
reasons why Treitschke hated England was that 
while she pursued power (according to his view) 
more greedily and more successfully than any other 
state, she was always pretending, and trying to 



70 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

persuade herself, that she was governed only by the 
most exalted motives, by the love of liberty, by 
sympathy for oppressed nationalities, by respect for 
treaties. That is, for Treitschke, mere falsity, mere 
intellectual cowardice : far better the frank recog- 
nition of the Great King, that the highest moral 
aim is the pursuit of power by the use of force, and 
that states as naturally and inevitably pursue 
these ends by means of war as do the beasts of the 
jungle. 

What are we to say to such doctrines ? It is not 
enough merely to dismiss them as brutal, immoral, 
repulsive. They might be all that, and yet be true. 
May we not say that to attempt to apply the Dar- 
winian doctrine of the struggle for existence as if it 
was a rule of life for human societies is not only 
false, but is an absolute repudiation of the most 
essential thing that separates man from the beasts, 
and that forms the essence of civilisation? Man is 
resolved that whatever may be the practice of na- 
ture he will not allow the weak to be driven to the 
wall, if he can help it; and one main reason why he 
organises himself into states is just that he not only 
feels that the weak are often better worth preserv- 
ing than the strong, but that he desires that the 
weak shall survive because they are weak. If you 
want to see how deeply that resolve is rooted, not 
in saints and heroes, but in ordinary commonplace 
men, think of the Titanic sinking beside its iceberg 
in the waste of seas. Among all that crowd of 
men, suddenly facing an appalling death, there is 
scarcely a thought of the survival of the strong 



GERMAN POLITICAL THEORIES 71 

and the rule of brute force : it is the survival of the 
weak that they proudly assure, and their dying 
act is to hand the women and children to the boats. 
And if it be answered that this is the morality of 
individuals, and has no validity for the state, the 
answer is that the state is composed of individuals, 
and directed by individuals, who cannot but be influ- 
enced in their action by their fundamental instincts. 
These instincts include greed, and fear, and lust, 
and many other bad passions, but they include also 
a sense of honour and a hatred of injustice; and it 
is as impossible for an honourable man to look on at 
the bullying of Belgium without an angry desire to 
punish the bully, as it is to look on at the bullying 
of a child. The best that is in man does not believe 
that it is right that the strong should wreak his 
power on the weak, but that the weak should be 
protected. 

It is simply not true that power is the one su- 
preme aim and purpose of the state. If it is to be 
defined in a single phrase (which is impossible) the 
supreme end of the state is justice, a part of which 
is freedom. It is but slowly and painfully that 
human societies limp towards this end, but they do 
advance, and perhaps the truest element in the defi- 
nition of progress is that it involves a steadily deep- 
ening sense of what justice and freedom mean. 
The states which have played the greatest part in 
history, and maintained their greatness long, have 
been able to do so because their power, upon the 
whole, meant an increase of justice upon the earth, 
like the empire of Rome; the states that have aimed 



72 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

only at power have usually been short-lived, like the 
empire of Attila and his Huns. And if it be true 
that fair and equal justice as between states has 
been even more difficult to secure than justice be- 
tween individuals in a state, nevertheless it is true 
that here also there has been progress; here also 
the noble human instinct which demands that the 
weak shall survive because they are weak grows 
daily stronger. The mere spectacle of a strong 
state attacking a weak arouses the indignation of 
the civilised world, and alienates everyone from the 
stronger state. Why was it that Germany, and 
most of the world with her, raged furiously against 
England during the Boer War? It was because 
Germany believed that England was using her 
power pitilessly to wipe out one of those small 
states that Treitschke says ought not to survive, 
and because in their innermost hearts her people 
simply did not accept the doctrine of their prophet. 
If they had believed it, they should have approved 
and admired the English action, even on their own 
misinterpretation of its reasons. And we were al- 
ready, during the nineteenth century, rising beyond 
this rather vague and helpless sentiment in favour 
of weak states. Europe was gradually working out 
a system of international law for the protection of 
all from each, and a very important part of this 
law was the group of treaties by which the neu- 
trality of Belgium and other small states was guar- 
anteed. 

The doctrine of power, as practised by the dis- 
ciples of Treitschke, has for the time destroyed 



_ GERMAN POLITICAL THEORIES 7Z 

all that advance. But only for the time. Human- 
ity will still pursue justice rather than the rule of 
force; and the state that acts on Treitschke's doc- 
trines will in the end suffer for it. 

It is true, as our realists say, that the actions of 
states are governed by self-interest, just as, accord- 
ing to some philosophers, the actions of individuals 
are governed by the desire for happiness. But 
there are some views of what constitutes happiness 
which will make the man who holds them a danger 
to his neighbours and force them to lock him up in 
prison or the lunatic asylum. And there are some 
views of what constitutes the real interest of a 
state which must make it the enemy of civilisation 
and of progress, and band the world against it. 
There are wide variations possible in the view of 
what constitutes the true interest of a state; and it 
is those views which are ultimately to the advan- 
tage of civilisation which will triumph in the long 
run. One state may hold that peace is its highest 
interest, next to honour and self-preservation; an- 
other that war is desirable in itself. Which of 
these views makes for the good of the world? One 
state may believe that the widest possible diffusion 
of liberty, the encouragement of the life-giving 
variety of free nations, is in its interest; another 
that its interest lies in the forcible imposition of its 
own power and its own culture upon unwilling re- 
cipients. One state may persuade itself that 
treaties have no validity when they stand in the way 
of the extension of its power; another may hold 
that the sanctity of treaties is essential to its own 



74 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

interests, as being the only basis upon which mutual 
confidence between nations can exist. One state 
may believe that the laws of morality and of private 
honour do not apply to international relations ; an- 
other may feel that at the very lowest " honesty is 
the best policy," between states as between indi- 
viduals, and that at the highest the maintenance of 
its honour is a dearer interest even than life. These 
are widely different views of self-interest which 
nations may take, and have taken. Is there much 
room for doubt which are best for the progress of 
the world ? 

What we have written does not pretend to be 
a systematic logical answer to the doctrine of 
Treitschke. It is rather an attempt to express what 
the ordinary Englishman dimly feels about these 
matters; and to set out a national ideal of conduct, 
to which England has often, as she knows, been 
sadly false, but which she has really entertained. 
Sometimes she has played the hypocrite. But 
hypocrisy is the tribute paid to virtue, and except 
when it is the lie in the soul, it is preferable to the 
kind of Truth which the Great King cultivated ; for 
at least it recognises the claims of a standard of 
conduct higher than that of the jungle. 

Fortunately for the world the kind of doctrine 
which Treitschke preached defeats itself, by blind- 
ing those who hold it. The masters of Realpolitik 
pride themselves upon shutting out sentimentalism 
and looking only at the brutal facts. But honour is 
a fact, though it is not brutal; the unconquerable 
soul of man is a fact, though it cannot be measured 



GERMAN POLITICAL THEORIES 75 

in centimetres like a Krupp gun ; and it is a fact that 
the passion of patriotism for a small and ruined 
country may burn as strong, and stronger, than 
the pride of a citizen in a state of Power and 
Culture. 

It is a fact, too, which the career of that Man 
of Power, Napoleon, might have taught, that the 
spirit of nationality, once aroused, is all but un- 
tameable: every time it is beaten to its Mother 
Earth, like the giant Antaeus, it redoubles its 
strength. All these are facts which the Treitsch- 
kean realist forgets; and forgetting them, he is 
led into strange miscalculations. Believing in war, 
he will be too quick to assume that a nation which 
is willing to make great sacrifices for peace must 
have fallen a victim to Treitschke's supreme sin of 
Feebleness, and will at any price avoid the masculine 
arbitrament of war. Believing that treaties have 
no validity when they are no longer advantageous, 
he will find it impossible to believe that there are 
states which would rather fall than be false to their 
obligations. Believing in power as the be-all and 
end-all of states, he will be unable to understand 
why a state should give complete freedom to her 
daughter-nations, and even to her foes of yester- 
day, for any other reason than that she was too 
weak to enforce her yoke, and it will puzzle him 
to see them leap to arms in her defence ; and puzzle 
him still more that a distant people whom he looked 
to see in revolt can forget their grievances of yes- 
terday, because they recognise the gift of justice. 
Believing in brute force, he will think it an easy 



'jd BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

matter to trample down a little people that trusted 
in his honour, and be bewildered that even the 
worst brutalities cannot reconcile them to their lot. 
Thank Heaven, the doctrine of power destroys it- 
self, sooner or later; the poison is its own antidote. 



CHAPTER III 

THE TWO GERMANIES 

WE have seen that the conduct of Germany, 
both in diplomacy and in war, during the 
summer of 191 4 has been a translation into action 
of the principles expounded by Treitschke; and 
that these principles were in their turn inspired by 
an admiring study of Prussian history and the 
methods of Prussian kings. If we are to arrive at 
the roots, therefore, of modern German policy, it 
must be by an examination of the history of Prus- 
sia and in particular of the methods by which her 
ascendancy over the rest of Germany was estab- 
lished. 

There has always been a sharp contrast between 
Prussia and the rest of Germany, and although it 
has greatly diminished during the last half -century, 
under influences which we shall have to examine, 
the contrast still survives. Until comparatively re- 
cently Prussia played but a small part in that 
remarkable intellectual activity which has been the 
greatest glory of the German people. The strength 
of Prussia lay not in thought but in action — ^in the 
strength and organisation of her army, and in the 
efficiency of her administrative system. Every 
German is conscious of this contrast. It has re- 
cently been expressed in a striking way by Prince 



78 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

von Billow, ex-Chancellor of the German Empire, 
and himself a Prussian of the Prussians. " Ger- 
man intellect/' he says, '' had already (at the be- 
ginning of the nineteenth century) reached its 
zenith without the help of Prussia. German intel- 
lectual life, which the whole world has learnt to ad- 
mire . . . was developed in the south and west, the 
German state in Prussia^ . . . Prussian state- 
life and German intellectual life must become recon- 
ciled . . . This reconciliation has not yet been 
achieved." ^ If we would understand the mind and 
action of modem Germany, we must follow these 
two strains in German life back to their origins; 
and observe, so far as is possible in a superficial 
sketch, the strength and weakness of each, and the 
way in which they have acted and reacted upon one 
another. 

We may most easily begin our enquiry two hun- 
dred and fifty years ago, when Germany had just 
emerged from the greatest catastrophe in her his- 
tory, the Thirty Years* War, devastated, impover- 
ished, politically disorganised, and at the mercy of 
the more consolidated states which lay on her 
borders. The unhappy nation was divided into 
more than three hundred practically independent 
states, most of which were entirely contemptible in 
resources and influence; even the greatest of them 
were, with one exception, too small to exercise any 
influence upon the affairs of Europe. The excep- 
tion was Austria; but Austria derived her influence 

^ "Imperial Germany" (English trans.), 270-1. 
* Ih. 272. 



THE TWO GERMANIES 5^9 

from the possession of a huge territory which was 
outside of Germany and was inhabited by a medley 
of non-German peoples. Austria held the primacy 
of the loose German confederacy called the Holy 
Roman Empire; but this relic of a dead mediaeval 
idea was entirely useless as a bond of unity, and 
as most of the main interests of Austria lay outside 
Germany, it followed that German interests had 
no effective guardian or mouthpiece in European 
affairs. Most of the three hundred petty princes 
regarded their subjects merely as tax-payers, de- 
spised their own race, language and customs, and 
devoted themselves to a contemptible mimicry of 
the ceremonies and graces of the French court. 
This state of things, which was at its worst in the 
second half of the seventeenth century, represents 
the very nadir of the fortunes of the German peo- 
ple. The shame of it has made an indelible impres- 
sion on the memory of the nation. They have 
drunk the cup of disunion and impotence to the very- 
dregs, and cannot forget it. The forces which have 
raised them from this humiliation to the front rank 
among the nations of the world have a claim upon 
the nation's gratitude which it is impossible to ex- 
aggerate; and this profound and sincere sentiment 
explains their readiness to accept and justify the 
methods by which these results were attained. 

Amidst all the poverty and humiliation which 
followed the Thirty Years' War there slowly 
emerged, between 1648 and the French Revolu- 
tion, two factors which contained the promise of 
better things, and which increasingly gave to the 



8o BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

German people reasons for holding up their heads 
among other nations. One of these was the stead- 
ily growing strength and fame of German learning; 
the other was the rise of the virile and masterful 
Prussian state. 

Even in the dismal second half of the seven- 
teenth century, there were two Germans who earned 
the respect and gratitude of all Europe. Both were 
men of learning, Leibnitz the philosopher, and 
Puffendorf, one of the founders of the science of 
international law. The work which they began was 
carried on by the German universities. Germany 
was fortunate in the possession of numerous uni- 
versities, and between 1648 and 1789 she added 
two of the most famous to the number — Halle and 
Gottingen. The groups of scholars who laboured 
in these places had not yet achieved any European 
fame, but during the eighteenth century they were 
already establishing new methods of patient, accu- 
rate and fearless enquiry, which were to make pos- 
sible the rnarvellous achievements of a later day. 
Even in the eighteenth century the profound philo- 
sophic genius of Kant had given to Germany the 
supremacy in the realm of philosophy. And out of 
the intellectual atmosphere created by the univer- 
sities there presently arose a great literature. The 
supreme age of German literature, which has had 
no comparable successor, was already almost at 
its height before the outbreak of the French Revo- 
lution, and long before any serious movement for 
the political unification of Germany had been 
thought of; Lessing and Herder, Goethe and 



THE TWO GERMANIES 8i 

Schiller, had either finished their work, or were in 
the pride of their power, in 1789. In the same 
period Germany had also given her supreme gift to 
the world — ^the gift of music. Bach, Gluck, Mo- 
zart, Haydn and Handel all belong to the eighteenth 
century, and Beethoven was just entering into his 
kingdom when the Revolution began. Great as 
have been the achievements of German intellect in 
the nineteenth century, they do not surpass in origi- 
nality and value the achievements of the age of 
political ineffectiveness, when even the dream of 
political unity had not yet been born. The greatest 
victories of German culture were won altogether 
without the aid and protection of Power, which 
Treitschke says culture needs for its advancement. 
In this wonderful intellectual renascence the 
state of Prussia had but a small part ; the main cen- 
tres of German learning, thought and art lay out- 
side her limits. Indeed many of the leaders of 
this revival felt and expressed a deep distaste for 
the spirit and the methods of Prussia; for its con- 
centration on material dominion, for its rigid disci- 
pline, which aspired to control the minds as well as 
the bodies of its subjects. To such spirits as Les- 
sing or Goethe the dominion of the sword was 
something vulgar ; their concern was with the king- 
dom of the mind, which is not confined by the 
boundaries of any state. They were cosmopolitans, 
not nationalists, because thought is cosmopolitan; 
and Lessing went so far as to speak of patriotism 
as a vice, because it narrowed the limits of men's 
sympathies. This cosmopolitan spirit was widely 



8a BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

diffused among the universities, not only in the 
eighteenth century, but far into the nineteenth, and 
it stands in marked contrast with the spirit of the 
modern German universities, which seem increas- 
ingly to claim the whole realm of thought as if it 
were a purely German province. 

For all their cosmopolitanism, however, the Ger- 
man universities in this age were in a real sense 
the centres and strongholds of the German spirit; 
they were the proudest possession of the German 
people, and the most characteristic. They made 
the German feel that among the nations of the 
world he counted for something, and for some- 
thing far loftier than mere physical power. There 
is one result, however, of the remarkable and 
dominating position occupied by the universities 
during this period in German life which deserves 
to be noted. They impressed upon the mind of the 
nation a certain academic character: a curious 
fondness for explaining or justifying action by 
theories and formulae, and a tendency to press 
these formulae to extreme conclusions. This 
tendency left the German people very open to be- 
come the captives of ideas or policies that could be 
supported upon theoretical or pseudo-scientific 
grounds. That was the consequence of the general 
divorce of intellectual life from practical concerns, 
and it was to have its effects in the future. 

In piquant contrast with this fine and inspiring 
world of idealists, scholars, poets and musicians, 
who were conquering for Germany the empire of 
the mind, stood the Prussian state, whose §^rowing 



THE TWO GERMANIES 83 

strength is the most important fact in the political 
history of the period. Its advancement from the 
level of a petty German principality to the rank 
of a great European power was the work of a 
remarkable series of princes of the Hohenzollern 
family, notably the Great Elector (1640 1688), 
Frederick William I (1713-1740), and, above all, 
the supreme hero of the Prussian state, and the 
supreme exponent of its spirit and methods, Fred- 
erick the Great (1740-1788), to whom modern 
German writers habitually refer cis simply The 
Great King. These men invented the methods and 
established the tradition of Prussian policy, which 
Bismarck was to carry to its triumph in the es- 
tablishment of the German Empire, and which 
Treitschke was to transform into a body of politi- 
cal principles. 

If we would understand the character of the 
Prussian state it is important to realise that the 
greater part of the territory of the state during 
this, its formative, period lay east of the river 
Elbe, in lands which were not originally German, 
but had been won from their Slavonic inhabitants 
in a long series of obscure wars, extending over 
centuries. The Prussian state had therefore been 
from the first military in character; it was a 
" Mark " or border province, a sort of permanent 
armed camp thrown out by the Germans into the 
realm of the Slavs; and its feudal nobility, the 
ancestors of the modern Junkers, were traditionally 
a fighting race, who owed their lands to the sword, 
and had never forgotten it. 



84 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

When the Great Elector in 1648 took in hand 
the task of transforming his impoverished state 
into an effective power, he found it divided into two 
main blocks, lying at some distance from one an- 
other. One of these was the Mark of Branden- 
burg, from which he took his title. Most of it lay- 
east of the Elbe, with its centre at Berlin, in an 
unfertile, rather desolate and very thinly populated 
region. The other was the duchy of Prussia — the 
East Prussia of modern maps — from which his son 
was to take his royal title. Though German it was 
not in Germany at all, but a fief part of Poland. 
It had been created by the order of fighting monks 
known as the Teutonic Knights, who had preached 
Christianity with the sword to the heathen Prus- 
sians, and reducing to subjection the population, 
had made a realm for themselves which they filled 
with German colonists. At the time of the Refor- 
mation the Master of the Order was a Hohenzol- 
lern, who, conveniently announcing his conversion 
to Protestantism, turned the lands of the Order into 
a principality for himself; and from him it had 
descended to the main Hohenzollern line. Thus 
both sections of the little state had been won by 
force, and one of them had come to the Hohen- 
zollerns by a sort of fraud. Force and fraud, as 
the means of building a state, lie at the root of 
Prussian history. Force and fraud indeed seemed 
to be the only means by which a small, poor and 
divided state, surrounded by powerful enemies, 
could develop into greatness. 

In this divided realm there could, of course, be 



THE TWO GERMANIES 8s 

no national feeling or patriotism. Its place was 
taken by the loyalty of tenants to their landlord 
and of soldiers to their commander. The latter %as 
the real tie which held the Hohenzollern realm 
together. But this kind of loyalty postulates con- 
tinued military organisation, and continual readi- 
ness for war. Not only the external conditions, 
therefore, but also the internal relations of the 
Hohenzollern realm dictated the fostering of a 
militarist spirit. 

The methods of the three great Hohenzollern 
princes of the formative period show a singular 
uniformity. In the first place, and above all, they 
concentrated their resources upon the maintenance 
of an army, large and efficient out of all proportion 
to the wealth and population of their state. The 
Great Elector, though his lands had been beggared 
and depopulated by the Thirty Years' War, founded 
the standing army of Prussia, and raised its num- 
ber to the surprising figure of 30,000. In the offi- 
cering of this force the widely diffused and warlike 
nobility of Prussia found a congenial task; and its 
efficiency was shown when in the battle of Fehr- 
bellin, to the astonishment of Europe, the hitherto 
invincible Swedes were defeated. Even the Great 
Elector's successor, the first King of Prussia, who 
was the least vigorous of the princes of this race, 
raised the strength of his army till it attained the 
surprising figure of nearly 50,000. For Frederick 
William I, most cheeseparing of monarchs, the 
army was the one thing upon which money was 
never stinted; though he never used it in the 



86 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

field, it occtipied all his thoughts. He improved the 
discipline and armament of his troops, and brought 
them under a much stricter and centralised control. 
Above all, he yet further increased their numbers ; 
and at his death the little Prussian state possessed 
an army of 84,000 men, unequalled in quality by the 
troops of any other European state; and this with 
a population of scarcely two millions. This army 
was the implement with which Frederick the Great 
conquered Silesia, and maintained it against a 
world in arms; it was this which enabled him to 
hold his own among the great powers, though his 
lands, even with Silesia added, were incomparably 
smaller and poorer than those of the rivals whom he 
forced to treat him as an equal ; it was the formi- 
dable military power of Prussia which enabled him, 
without the loss of a man or the expenditure of a 
thaler, to gain possession of the Polish lands to 
which he had no shadow of a legal or moral claim. 
Frederick the Great saw as clearly as any man that 
all the greatness of the Prussian state rested upon 
the army: he gave as much pains to its improve- 
ment as his predecessors, and left it at the height 
of its fame, as the most perfect military implement 
in the world. 

To eighteenth century Europe it seemed little 
short of a miracle that a state so small and poor as 
Prussia should be able to maintain a force so large. 
The miracle was made possible only by an assidu- 
ous attention to economy, and the eager employ- 
ment of every possible means of increasing both the 
population and the prosperity of the country. All 



THE TWO GERMANIES 87 

the great HohenzoUerns gave anxious thought to 
these needs; perhaps most of all the rough, hard- 
headed, laborious Frederick William I. They all 
did everything possible to attract desirable immi- 
grants by grants of land, to create new industries, 
to improve agriculture, to develop communications. 
In no European country was the material develop- 
ment of the resources of the state more anxiously 
considered by its rulers than in Prussia, and in this 
respect they were the model kings of their age. 
They were intelligent enough also to see that the 
prosperity of a country depends largely upon com- 
petent and honest administration, and the just 
enforcement of laws. For these purposes they 
brought gradually into existence an extremely efH- 
cient, and also an extremely economical, bureau- 
cracy. If the army was the right-hand pillar of 
their throne, the bureaucracy was the left-hand pil- 
lar. The creation of the wonderful Prussian bu- 
reaucracy, and the establishment of its tradition of 
intelligent if rather high-handed efficiency, belongs 
to this period, and especially to Frederick William. 
Prussia in the eighteenth century was the most in- 
telligently governed state in Europe, and it was this 
which enabled her to stand the strain of maintain- 
ing her disproportionate army. But the increase 
of population and the growth of wealth and pros- 
perity did not form the supreme end of these re- 
markable princes; they were only a means. The 
main purpose of all these admirable activities was 
to provide the foundation upon which a supreme 
army could alone rest. The country existed for the 



88 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

sake of the army ; and the army existed as a means 
to the extension of Power. Power was the su- 
preme end of the state, for Frederick the Great as 
for his pupil and admirer Treitschke. Already we 
see the source of Treitschke's doctrines. And 
we see also their partial justification: — that 
Power, when pursued by men of great intelligence, 
brings prosperity as a condition of its own 
existence. 

And in the pursuit of Power — this is the third 
outstanding feature of these Hohenzollern methods 
— no means were regarded as unlawful. A king, 
Frederick the Great repeatedly asserted, in one 
form or another, must never allow his own inter- 
ests to be sacrificed by any alliance which he enters 
into; he should regard an alliance as invalid from 
the moment when it ceases to serve his interests; 
and he commits a crime if he permits himself to be 
hampered by a treaty which no longer serves for 
him any useful purpose. Here is the doctrine 
of Treitschke, a century before Treitschke's time. 
And on this doctrine the Great King and his prede- 
cessors, but especially the Great King, consistently 
acted. 

The Great Elector secured independent control 
over Prussia (for which at first he was a vassal 
of Poland) by playing fast and loose alternately 
with his two great neighbours, Sweden and Poland ; 
and in complicated intrigues with and against Louis 
XIV of France he earned the reputation of being 
the most untru&tworthy ruler in Europe, taking 
from each side in turn subsidies which he did noth- 



THE TWO GERMANIES 89 

ing to earn, and devoting them always to the ad- 
vance of his own immediate ends. 

But Frederick the Great surpassed all the records 
of his great-grandfather. Five months after he 
succeeded to the throne and to the command of his 
superb army, in May, 1740, the lands of the House 
of Austria also passed to a new ruler, the young 
Princess Maria Theresa. Frederick's father had 
signed the famous Pragmatic Sanction, whereby he 
guaranteed the succession of Maria Theresa to the 
undivided dominions of her house. Frederick 
spontaneously wrote to the new ruler renewing 
these pledges, and offering the aid of his army if 
she should be attacked. Having thus put her off 
her guard, within three months he led that same 
army to seize one of her most fertile provinces. 
That was the mode in which Silesia was added to 
the Prussian realm — by force and fraud; and not 
all the heroism with which it was subsequently de- 
fended in the Seven Years' War can obliterate the 
memory of the treachery. Indeed the great com- 
bination of powers which attacked Frederick in 
that war was largely brought together by the pro- 
found suspicion which his conduct had created, and 
by the conviction (not wholly unfounded) that he 
meant to try the same methods again. And when 
the Seven Years' War was over, and Silesia was 
secure, it was the cunning and perfectly unscrupu- 
lous diplomacy of Frederick which brought about 
the most cynical crime of modern history, the first 
partition of Poland in 1772, whereby Prussia ac- 
quired yet more territory, and raised to a still 



90 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

higher point her position among the powers of Eu- 
rope. Unquestionably the Great King enormously 
increased the status and influence of his kingdom, 
and in doing so gave to Germany a nucleus round 
which could gather the dawning hopes of unity. 
Unquestionably he did it by force and by fraud, by 
the concentration of the whole resources of the 
state upon military force, and by a cynical disre- 
gard of the obligations of honour in international 
relations. This was the moral of the formative 
period of Prussian history: that the supreme ob- 
ject of the state is Power; that the great means to 
Power is military force; that the whole resources 
of the state, organised in the most scientific and 
intelligent way possible, must be conceived of as 
existing for the maintenance of military force, that 
in the pursuit of Power all means are permissible, 
and no treaties are sacred; that, in short, crime 
ceases to be crime if it is successful. 

A policy of this character must be carried out at 
once with audacity and circumspection if it is to be 
successful. During the period of the French Revo- 
lution these qualities seemed to disappear from 
Prussian policy; but the features of single-minded 
concern for the territorial interests of the state, and 
indifference to other considerations, continued to 
mark it. The Prussian government pledged itself 
to join in the attack on revolutionary France; but 
when it found, as it soon did, that there were no 
direct gains to be made, it quickly withdrew its 
forces and left its allies in the lurch, in order to 
share with Russia in the second and third partitions 



THE TWO GERMANIES 91 

of Poland. Then it made peace with France in 
1795, frankly abandoning all the German lands on 
the west of the Rhine, where its own interests were 
insignificant, and thus committing treason to the 
German national idea, in order to seize the oppor- 
tunity of extending its influence in northern Ger- 
many and to digest its recent Polish acquisitions. 
The Prussian army thus looked on idly during all 
the fierce fighting from 1795 to 1806, a course 
which Frederick the Great would never have pur- 
sued. When Napoleon threatened to make himself 
master of Europe in 1805, Prussia, instead of join- 
ing with Austria and Russia in resisting him, 
thought the chance a good one for annexing Han- 
over, and negotiated with Napoleon for that end. 
But the conqueror soon let it be seen, when he had 
defeated his earlier foes, that he had no intention 
of strengthening this untrustworthy power; and 
Prussia, defeated at her own game of fraud, fell 
back confidently upon her other weapon of force, 
feeling quite certain that the Corsican upstart 
would be powerless against the legions of the Great 
King. The result was the crushing defeat at Jena, 
and the sudden and complete fall of Prussia from 
her high estate. She was stripped of more than 
half of her territory, saw her soil occupied by 
French garrisons, had to give up her recently- 
acquired Polish lands to form a new independent 
state under French influence on her flank; and, 
worst blow of all, was forbidden to maintain an 
army of more than 42,cx)o men. The fabric of 
Power which the Hohenzollems had built seemed 



92 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

to have collapsed. The moral might have been 
drawn from these events that the consistent pursuit 
of a policy which leads to universal distrust is not 
in the long run to the interest of a state, whatever 
immediate advantage it may bring. The moral 
which Prussian historians have drawn is quite dif- 
ferent: it is Treitschke's moral, that the one un- 
pardonable offence in a state is feebleness. Jena 
was not the punishment of dishonour; it was the 
punishment of a lack of boldness in dishonour. 

After 1806 Prussia had to start afresh to re- 
build the very foundations of her strength. And 
now comes an extremely interesting period in her 
development. The Prussian Junker and the Prus- 
sian bureaucrat, faced by the collapse of their tradi- 
tional methods, were at sea ; and the men who were 
to build a new Prussia had to be called in from 
other parts of Germany. The marvellous work of 
reform and reorganisation which filled the years 
1807-1813, and made possible the heroic days of 
the national rising against Napoleon, was carried 
out by men who represented a revolt from the Prus- 
sian tradition, who gave their services to the Prus- 
sian state mainly because they hoped it might be 
turned into the nucleus of a united Germany, and 
who, for that end, laboured to transform the whole 
character of the state. Hardenberg, who gave a 
new direction to Prussian foreign policy, making it 
stand for the cause of Germany and no longer 
merely for a narrow and selfish aim of territorial 
aggrandisement, was a Hanoverian. So was 
Scharnhorst, the reorganiser of Frederick's army. 



THE TWO GERMANIES 93 

whose inspiration was the idea of transforming the 
army from the host of a conquering king into the 
civic force of a free nation, in arms against foreign 
dominion. The greatest of the group, Stein, was 
a Rhinelander, and of him, still more than of the 
rest, it is true that he only cared for Prussia in so 
far as he could hope to use her as the means to 
a free and self-governing German nation. His pas- 
sion was the love of freedom, an emotion alien to 
all the traditions of the Prussian state; and the 
drastic reforms which he carried out — reforms 
which were deeply disliked by the traditional ruling 
classes, and were only rendered possible by the gen- 
eral conviction of the desperate situation of the 
state — were all inspired by the belief that the 
strongest state is the state whose citizens are not 
the mere servants and implements of a master, but 
are partners in the promotion of the common wel- 
fare. To the immense indignation of the Prussian 
nobles, he carried out by a stroke of the pen the 
emancipation of the serfs on their domains. A 
student and admirer of the English system, he in- 
troduced into Prussia local self-government on a 
considerable scale, and was a strong believer in the 
value of a parliamentary system for the state as a 
whole, which the king was led to promise in the 
excitement of 1813. Above all Stein felt that, if 
Prussia was to become the leader of a united Ger- 
many, she must get into harmonious relations with 
that wonderful intellectual movement, now in its 
full splendour, which constituted the real glory of 
the German nation. The foundation of the new 



94 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

University of Berlin was meant to identify Prus- 
sia with intellectual Germany, and largely succeeded 
in doing so. All these reforms represent a great 
departure from the traditional methods and aims of 
Prussia. Thanks to them, Prussia became the 
centre of the hopes of all the most generous minds 
of Germany; they looked to her to lead them not 
only to national unity, but to national liberty and 
self-government; and it was the enthusiasm thus 
created which explains the part played by Prussia- 
in the thrilling war of liberation in 1813 and 18 14. 
It appeared that this state had cut herself off from 
her old and bad traditions ; that she aimed now at 
something nobler than mere Power, at Freedom and 
Justice ; and that the long cleavage between the two 
Germanics, the Germany which rejoiced in the free 
partnership of all peoples in the kingdom of the 
mind, and that other Germany which had dreamt 
only of the kingdom of the sword, was coming to 
an end. 

But these fine hopes, which so exalt the years 
of Liberation, were doomed to disappointment. 
The traditions of Prussia were too deeply rooted 
to be so easily overthrown. Junker and bureau- 
crat had only accepted with profound distaste these 
new methods and ideas, so inconsistent with those 
upon which the greatness of Prussia had been built. 
The reformers quickly disappeared from the scene. 
Stein, driven out at the demand of Napoleon in 
1808, was not restored to favour when Napoleon 
fell; in a few years he was under police super- 
vision as a dangerous Radical, and there were de- 



THE TWO GERMANIES 95 

mands for his ruin. Hardenberg, though he clung 
to office for some years, did so only at the price of 
abandoning all that he had fought for. The Junker 
and the bureaucrat resumed their sway, though they 
resumed it over a rejuvenated Prussia; the prom- 
ise of parliamentary institutions were shelved ; and 
in the first years after 1815 the confidence in Prus- 
sia as the hope of Germany gradually turned into 
disappointment and bitter anger. The cleavage be- 
tween the two Germanics, from 181 5 onwards, 
grew steadily deeper again. 

We have observed that in the period before 
the Revolution the intellectual world of Germany 
had on the whole taken comparatively little inter- 
est in political questions; it was content to pursue 
its studies placidly under whatever form of govern- 
ment might exist, and, far from resenting the dis- 
unity of Germany, was inclined to congratulate 
itself upon the existence of little courts like that 
of Weimar, whose princes often afforded a place 
of refuge for the Muses. The Revolution, with 
all the eager discussion which it provoked, changed 
all this, and politics became a main preoccupation 
of the universities during the first half of the nine- 
teenth century. 

There were two principal currents in German 
political thought in this period, as in the thought 
of all countries. There was a school which, under 
the influence of one aspect of the Romantic Re- 
vival, looked back with reverence to the ages of 
faith in the past, and advocated the doctrine of 
authority in Church and State against the ignorant 



96 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

tumults of the mob. But this school formed a small 
minority. On the whole the German university 
world and the intellectual classes whom it influ- 
enced found their inspiration in the rival doctrines 
of Liberalism. So far did this go that in 1819 the 
governments of Austria and Prussia agreed that 
the ferment of *' Jacobinical " ideas in nearly all 
the universities formed a danger to society, and 
combined to take active measures of suppression, 
suspending professors wholesale and forbidding 
the Burschenschaften or " Fellowships "of demo- 
cratically minded students which had sprung up 
everywhere, and had entered into affiliations with 
one another. 

For half a century the universities of Germany 
became centres of a political propaganda. Always 
liable to be the captives of formulae, professors 
and students swore allegiance to the twin formulae 
of Nationalism and Liberalism, and made them- 
selves the most strenuous advocates of these causes. 
They preached the unity of Germany, a unity in 
which all particular states should be wholly merged, 
Prussia among the rest. They preached with even 
greater fervour the doctrines of political liberty, 
and parliamentary institutions. Their dream was 
of a single German state, governed under the 
forms of a democratic republic or a limited mon- 
archy. But they thought of themselves as citizens 
not of Germany only but of Europe. They re- 
spected and admired the institutions of England, 
and lauded her friendship for the cause of liberty. 
They followed with deep sympathy the political 



THE TWO GERMANIES 97 

struggles in France. They rejoiced in the suc- 
cesses and sorrowed over the failures of movements 
towards national freedom in other countries, in 
Greece, in Spain, in Italy, in Belgium, in Poland. 
Like their predecessors they were cosmopolitan, but 
their cosmopolitanism was political as well as intel- 
lectual. The reunited Germany of which they 
dreamed was not to be a state of Power, aiming at 
the subjugation of its neighbours; it was to be a 
free member in a family of free European nations, 
living in peace and mutual respect, and striving 
against one another only in an honourable rivalry 
in the extension of the dominion of the mind. They 
thought not of Power, but of Justice and Freedom 
as the ends for which the state exists ; and regarded 
war not as a thing good in itself, but as a necessary 
evil that humanity, governed by reason and justice, 
would one day find a means to abolish. The men 
of this generation are habitually treated with scorn 
by modern German historians of the Prussian 
school, as unpractical dreamers and sentimentalists, 
and (worst crime of all) as cosmopolitans. But 
among them were many of the greatest names of 
German culture; the state of Power, which has 
scornfully abandoned their ideals, has not sur- 
passed or equalled their intellectual achievements. 
During the first half of the nineteenth century 
the Germany of dreams and ideals strove imceas- 
ingly for national unity and political liberty. They 
attained some success in some of the minor states, 
especially of the south, which set up parliamentary 
systems. But complete victory seemed to be in 



98 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

their grasp when in 1848 the example of France, 
falling on a soil prepared by these long labours, 
brought about a simultaneous revolutionary out- 
break in every part of Germany. This outbreak 
came so suddenly, and its success was at first so 
complete, that all the governments were driven to 
agree to the election of a parliament for all Ger- 
many, which was to sit at Frankfurt and to draw 
up a constitution for the united German realm. 
Amid great enthusiasm the parliament met, and 
the dreams of the academic theorists seemed about 
to be realised. But almost from the first it became 
clear that there would be little result. The parlia- 
ment was trying to do too much, and to do it too 
quickly. The academic theorists, when they came 
to face practical problems, developed wide differ- 
ences; and in the end the parliament of Frankfurt 
was a complete fiasco. The Germany of dreams 
and ideals had had its chance, and had failed. It 
remained to be seen whether the other Germany, 
the Germany of blood and iron, would have greater 
success. That was the situation in the middle of 
the century: Germany had been disillusioned very 
roughly, and was waiting for guidance. 

It goes without saying that the ideas of the 
academic Liberals made no appeal to the govern- 
ing elements in the Prussian state, for everything 
that they advocated was in direct conflict with the 
Prussian tradition. The Junker and the bureau- 
crat cared nothing for the unity of Germany, unless 
it was to be brought about under the dominion of 
Prussia : against a united Germany in which Prus- 



THE TWO GERMANIES 99 

sia was to lose its identity they would have fought 
to the last breath. Still less did they believe in the 
value of political liberty and self-government: this 
was in their eyes only dangerous and pestilent non- 
sense. They believed in discipline, not liberty; in 
the firm rule of a military chief backed by trained 
officials, not in the settlement of great issues by the 
ballot-papers of the ignorant. Least of all did they 
believe in sentimentalities about the brotherhood 
of nations and the reign of peace. They believed in 
war as the rule of life, in the sword as the final 
arbiter. 

But clear as was the view of the Prussian ruling 
classes on the issues raised by the Liberals, Prus- 
sian policy during this period was far from show- 
ing its old single-minded vigour and decision. A 
little of the poison of the " Radical " Stein sur- 
vived in the bureaucracy itself. The large terri- 
tories in Western Germany which Prussia had ac- 
quired at the fall of Napoleon had been deeply 
influenced by French ideas, and introduced an ele- 
ment into the state which was quite out of harmony 
with the true old Prussia east of the Elbe. And 
even here, in the big towns, the poison of Liberal- 
ism was at work: the revolution of 1848 when it 
came was more violent in Berlin, the sanctuary of 
the Prussian tradition, than anywhere else. More- 
over, though Junker and bureaucrat disliked the 
ideas of Liberalism, even they were not wholly free 
from the temptation to flirt with the popular party, 
with a view to serving Prussian interests. In 1848 
the king, half-heartedly and with many contradict- 



100 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

tions, allowed himself to negotiate with the Frank- 
furt parliament, in the hope of becoming king of 
the new united Germany. Worse still, under the 
pressure of the revolution in Berlin, he was forced 
to accept a parliamentary system, and in 1850 a 
constitution was definitely established. Although 
the parliament thus set up was very cleverly con- 
stituted so as to secure the ascendancy of the upper 
class, and checked by a strong second chamber, 
and although its powers of interfering in the 
conduct of government were sharply limited, still 
the noxious thing was there, not to be got rid of : 
an elected parliament lodged in the body of the 
autocratic Prussian state. All this meant a breach 
with Prussian tradition, and caused a good deal of 
vacillation in policy. Worst of all, the kings of 
this period were far from showing the Great 
King's single-minded concentration upon the ma- 
terial interests of his state. They allowed theni- 
selves to be influenced by considerations which 
Frederick would never have permitted to deflect 
his policy. Frederick William III was in turn the 
creature of the Russian Tsar and of the Austrian 
Chancellor. Frederick William IV, to the exas- 
peration of his servants, was often governed by 
such un-Prussian sentiments as loyalty to Austria 
because she was the traditional head of the Ger- 
manic Confederation, as consideration for the 
rights of the minor princes, or as the conviction 
that the maintenance of order and the defeat of the 
revolution in Europe should be his highest aim, 
instead of the aggrandisement of Prussia. Conse- 



THE TWO GERMANIES loi 

quently Prussia during these years is scarcely her- 
self, and many good Junkers were sadly persuaded 
that her great days were over, and that the iron 
tradition of the Great King was dead for ever. 

But already there was rising into prominence the 
greatest of all exponents of Prussian methods, 
greater than the Great King himself — Otto von 
Bismarck. From the day when he assumed con- 
trol in 1862 the old strength and clearness of Prus- 
sia came alive again, in more than its old vigour, 
only revised and modified to meet the condition of a 
new age. Within ten years Bismarck had fought 
three wars whose dazzlingly rapid success put the 
Great King into the shade; and he had not only 
conquered for Prussia the mastery of the rest of 
Germany, but he had tamed the intellectuals of 
Germany, and bound them to the chariot-wheels of 
Prussia. It is one of the most amazing achieve- 
ments in modern history; and it was done by the 
use of the old Prussian methods : force and fraud, 
blood and iron. 

Bismarck was a man of genius, but he was also 
a Junker of the Junkers, belonging to a pure- 
blooded Prussian house whose traditions, through 
centuries, had been utterly Prussian. In beliefs, 
and in attitude of mind, he was pure Junker; and 
he had had no patience with the un-Prussian vacil- 
lations and half-hearted advances towards Liberal- 
ism during the generation preceding his advent to 
power. 

Like all the Junkers, his loyalty was all for 
Prussia, and he cared nothing for the union of Ger- 



102 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

many, unless it was to be under Prussian dominion. 
But he was clever enough to see that the sentiment 
of nationalism in the rest of Germany was a power- 
ful force, which might be very useful ; and once he 
had demonstrated, in the Danish and Austrian 
wars, that Prussia was the master, and had ensured 
her supremacy, he was ready to talk German pa- 
triotism with the best of them, in preparation for 
the coming French war by which he designed 
to rivet the control of Prussia on the lesser 
states. 

Like all the Junkers, he had no belief at all in 
parliamentary government, and, as he showed at 
the beginning of his period of office, he was per- 
fectly ready to defy parliament and to ride rough- 
shod over it if he could not otherwise get his way. 
This episode, by which Bismarck's dictatorship was 
established, is so instructive, and so important in its 
bearings on the development of the German system 
of government, that it deserves some description. 
For it represents the real and permanent victory 
of the Prussian military monarchy over the prin- 
ciples of Liberalism. 

When Bismarck became First Minister of Prus- 
sia in 1862, an acute conflict had been raging for 
three years between the king (William I) and the 
large Liberal majority in the Prussian Landtag or 
parliament. The king, acting as the hereditary 
chief of the army, had carried out a great scheme 
of reorganisation which involved a large increase in 
the size and cost of the army. The representative 
chamber in the Landtag was opposed to this scheme. 



THE TWO GERMANIES 103 

and had for three years only voted the necessary 
funds "provisionally," and under protest, from 
year to year; in 1862 they took the extreme meas- 
ure of rejecting the Budget altogether, by the re- 
markable majority of 308 to 10. There has never 
been a moment in German history when parliamen- 
tary supremacy was so nearly attained. The re- 
newed and increasing majority which the Liberals 
obtained at each dissolution showed that public 
opinion was overwhelmingly on their side. If they 
had won in this struggle, their victory would have 
meant the downfall of the Prussian monarchy and 
of Prussian militarism, and the establishment of a 
system of government like that of England or 
France. They very nearly did win. The king 
was on the point of abdicating when, as a last 
resort, he called in Bismarck, who was notorious 
as an extreme anti-Liberal. 

Bismarck treated the question with a high hand. 
He snapped his fingers at the claim of parliament 
to control taxation under the terms of the consti- 
tution. He took up the position that the king was 
absolute head of the army, and that parliament had 
no right to refuse the money necessary for the 
maintenance of the army on the footing that the 
king considered necessary. During four successive 
years he governed in defiance of parliament, raising 
the taxes in spite of the annual rejection of the 
Budget. He had force on his side, since he con- 
trolled both the army and the bureaucracy which 
collected the taxes ; and, in the phrase in which his 
opponents summed up his principles, " force beats 



104 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

law." A parliament in the Prussian state was, in- 
deed, powerless against these methods. 

It was with the army thus maintained in defi- 
ance of parliament that he fought both the Danish 
and the Austrian wars. Both of these wars were 
unpopular; the majority in parliament opposed the 
cold-blooded diplomacy by which they were pre- 
pared as vigorously as it opposed the unconstitu- 
tional methods by which the army was raised. But 
their opposition here was as boldly disregarded as 
their claim to control taxation. In the end the bril- 
liant results of the two wars brought victory also 
in the parliamentary sphere. Bismarck had estab- 
lished the greatness of Prussia not only without 
the aid of the Liberals, but in the teeth of their 
opposition; and after his victory, resistance died 
out. By 1866 he had not only made Prussia the 
dominant state in Germany; he had also turned the 
forms of popular government in Prussia into a 
nullity, and in both respects his success so hyp- 
notised the public mind that the results were re- 
ceived with enthusiasm. 

But Bismarck was too clever a man to press his 
victories too far. Just as he refused to annex any 
territory from Austria because he looked forward 
to making use of her in the future, so in the con- 
stitutional sphere, having once shown that parlia- 
ment could be successfully overridden if it formed 
a real obstacle to his policy, and having reduced its 
powers to conveniently humble proportions, he was 
careful to deal with it gently, because the power of 
public opinion which it influenced could be very 



THE TWO GERMANIES 105 

useful. He cultivated the arts of parliamentary 
management. And, since the public sentiment in 
favour of parliamentary institutions, especially out- 
side of Prussia, was still strong, he was ready to 
pander to it on the surface. When the Prussian 
Empire over the rest of Germany was established 
in 1 87 1, this despiser of representative institutions 
actually set up, as part of the imperial constitution, 
a Reichstag elected from all parts of Germany on 
the most democratic franchise, thus taking the wind 
out of the sails of the Liberals. But, as we shall 
see, he skilfully ensured that it should have no 
power of interference in the actual conduct of gov- 
ernment and in the appointment of ministers and 
little real power even over legislation and taxation. 
He also checked it, with extreme cleverness, by 
using the federal principle as the basis of a second 
chamber with far greater powers than the Reichs- 
tag was permitted to enjoy. So long as the Ger- 
man constitution remains what it is — and its 
stability is secured by the fact that it forms a sort 
of treaty between the various states which have 
been united in the Empire — the Reichstag may 
place obstacles in the way of the government, but 
it cannot control it; the real power in Germany 
rests in the hands of the Emperor and the Chan- 
cellor whom he nominates. 

Finally, Bismarck had as little sympathy as other 
Junkers with the demands of the Liberals for free- 
dom of the press, free discussion, free criticism of 
the government. During the great conflict of 
1862 — 66, and occasionally in later years, he did 



io6 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

not hesitate to suppress newspapers which took an 
inconveniently independent line. But he was much 
too astute not to see that suppressions and prosecu- 
tions of newspapers could not wisely be too freely 
employed, and that in the nineteenth century the 
stifling of public opinion was impossible. He knew 
a better way. From the beginning of his political 
career he studied the art of influencing the press, 
and by that means making or controlling public 
opinion. Nobody has ever been his equal in this 
art, or in the unobtrusive subtlety with which it was 
practised. Nor was it the press only that he influ- 
enced ; especially in the later part of his career, he 
courted and influenced the professors, who exer- 
cise so much weight upon German opinion. He 
was the inventor of the art of " mobilising public 
opinion " which has become one of the principal 
branches of Prussian statecraft. The way in which 
the right atmosphere was prepared through the 
press before each of his great wars is almost dia- 
bolical in its cleverness. He it was who turned 
German opinion (previously so various and so ob- 
stinate) into "an orchestra which obeys only the 
baton of government," at any rate in regard to 
foreign relations. And he did it all the more skil- 
fully by not attempting to suppress differences of 
opinion or of method. 

Bismarck's great work was the establishment of 
the German Empire under Prussian control. He 
achieved it by means of three wars, fought within 
eight years; and when he had finished his task, 
fought no more wars, but devoted himself to the 



THE TWO GERMANIES 107 

organisation of the great state he had created, in 
readiness for its next enterprise. The first war, 
against Denmark (1864), gave him the opportun- 
ity of annexing Schleswig and Holstein, and 
(more important) the grounds for a quarrel with 
Austria. The second war, against Austria (1866), 
enabled him to drive that state out of German af- 
fairs, and to annex to Prussia the chief states of 
Northern Germany which still remained independ- 
ent; so that Prussia now possessed two-thirds of 
the territory of the future empire, and was sure of 
supremacy. The third war, against France 
(1870- 1 871) showed Prussia as the champion of 
Germany against the traditional foe that had once 
profited by her disunion, and led to the conferment 
of the imperial crown on the Prussian king, on 
the proposal of the King of Bavaria, the chief 
among those south-German states which had 
hitherto been deeply jealous of Prussia. Each of 
these wars was quite deliberately prepared and 
provoked in cold blood, in order to lead to exactly 
the consequences that resulted. In each case the in- 
tended victim was skilfully isolated from all pos- 
sible allies before he was struck down; Bismarck 
never entered on a war without knowing that he 
would win. 

The methods of this extraordinary man are 
exactly the methods of the Prussia of the eight- 
eenth century: the cold-blooded use of military 
force, based on the most scientific organisation, 
and accompanied by a complete disregard of moral 
restraints. But Bismarck showed an immense 



io8 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

superiority over all his Prussian predecessors not 
only in the diplomatic skill with which he prepared 
the way, but above all by his realisation of the value 
of what he called " the imponderables/* He saw 
the importance of having public opinion on his 
side, not only in his own country but elsewhere ; he 
knew that the sense of justice, sympathy for the 
weak, indignation at the spectacle of brute force 
brutally used, and a prejudice in favour of honour- 
able dealing, are widely diffused among men, and 
although for him these things had no bearing upon 
international relations, he knew it was an immense 
source of strength to have them on your side. He 
managed to do so to a remarkable degree, consider- 
ing how calculated his wars were. 

The methods by which he alienated sympathy 
from France on the eve of his last great war form 
an admirable illustration of his mode of procedure. 
The preparation began long beforehand, as soon as 
the war with Austria was over. Napoleon III, 
thinking his dignity impaired by the growth of 
Prussian power which followed that war, talked 
about the necessity of " compensations,'' and Bis- 
marck had conversations on this subject with 
Benedetti, the French ambassador. The talk 
turned, among other subjects, upon the possibility 
of a French annexation of Belgium, which would, 
of course, have been a monstrous violation of the 
treaty of 1839. At one stage in the discussions 
certain suggestions on this head were put down 
on paper, in Benedetti's handwriting. Whether 
Benedetti had himself composed these notes, or 



THE TWO GERMANIES 109 

whether, as has been confidently asserted, Bis- 
marck himself raised the subject and actually dic- 
tated these notes to Benedetti to form the basis of 
discussion, will probably never be known. What is 
known, is that the discussion was entirely confi- 
dential, that the subject was dropped, and that the 
notes were thrown into the waste-paper basket. 
Later Benedetti asked about them, and was told 
they had been destroyed. In reality they had been 
carefully put away. Three years later they were 
produced and published, on the eve of the war, in 
order to alienate public opinion from France, and 
especially in order to arouse the indignation of Eng- 
land. These are the methods of the card-sharper ; 
yet they were employed, and not on one occasion 
only, by a great statesman. They were his method 
of recognising the value of " imponderables," such 
as the sense of honour. 

It was, then, by using the traditional methods of 
Prussia that Bismarck created the German Empire. 
As in the days when Prussia was being raised from 
a petty state into a great power, force and fraud 
were exhibited as the means by which the great- 
ness of states is established. By following the 
traditions of Prussia Bismarck had succeeded in 
doing what the idealists had utterly failed to do, 
even when they seemed to have all the cards in their 
hands; he had given unity to the German people, 
and had established a parliament which, however 
incomplete its authority, was at least representative 
of the whole of Germany. Is it wonderful that 
these events produced a revolution in German 



no BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

opinion, and that the Prussian tradition began to 
permeate the whole of German life ? 

The Prussian mode of military organisation, the 
methods of the Prussian bureaucracy, were ex- 
tended to the other states. Above all, the Prussian 
spirit, the Prussian way of regarding political ques- 
tions, began to conquer the German mind. The 
Prussian school of historians had already, before 
Bismarck's triumph was complete, begun to glorify 
the achievements and to justify the methods of the 
great Prussian kings. Now the popular venera- 
tion for Bismarck, the popular gratitude for the 
dazzling gifts which he had given to Germany, 
completed the demonstration. The eloquence of 
the chair drew the moral from the achievements of 
the statesman : Treitschke and his doctrine were the 
final product of the Prussian idea, and the methods 
of a Frederick and a Bismarck were exalted into 
the inevitable rules of government for a sound and 
well-organised state. Thus the gospel of Power 
was the product of two centuries of history. 

It is the greatest, but it is also the most terrible, 
of the achievements of the Iron Chancellor — ^that 
he Prussianised the soul of the countrymen of Kant 
and of Goethe. 



CHAPTER IV 

HOW PRUSSIA RULES GERMANY 

BISMARCK'S triumph brought not only the 
victory of the Prussian theory of government, 
the doctrine of Power, over the mind of the Ger- 
man people; it brought also the effective dominion 
of Prussia and Prussian methods over the rest of 
Germany. This supremacy was secured by the 
Constitution of the German Empire, which was 
set up in 1871; and the way in which it works, 
under pseudo-democratic forms, can only be made 
clear by some analysis of the German system of 
government. 

The German Empire is a federation of twenty- 
five states, most of which are very small, while 
Prussia, the greatest of them, has three-fifths of 
the total population of the Empire. Each of 
these states has a government of its own, includ- 
ing (in all but two cases) a representative parlia- 
ment or Landtag. The powers of the Landtag 
vary from state to state, but in every case except 
the three Free Cities the effective centre of govern- 
ment is to be found in a monarch (whether he be 
called a King or a Duke) and in the permanent 
body of officials which he controls; and this monar- 
chical system everywhere enjoys a far higher 
degree of independence than is usual in other coun- 



112 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

tries. In no case are the ministers of state, who 
carry on the actual government, under the control 
of parliament, or capable of being dismissed by it, 
as in France or England. 

But the government's independence of parlia- 
ment reaches its highest point in Prussia. Here 
the parliament consists of two houses; a House of 
Lords, partly hereditary and partly nominated by 
the King, and far more dependent upon the King 
than the English House of Lords has ever been; 
and an elected house, in choosing which the electors 
are divided into three classes in such a way that 
the few rich electors have twice as much weight 
in the election as the numerous poor. The min- 
isters do not sit as ordinary members in either 
house, but have a right to appear and to make 
statements in both; in doing so they have a privi- 
leged position. They are all appointed by the 
King, and there is no means by which either house 
of parliament can compel the resignation of any 
of them. All new laws require the assent of par- 
liament. But new laws are nearly always pro- 
posed by the government; and when any legislative 
proposals are independently put forward by the 
elected house, if they are in any way objectionable 
to the government, they are sure to be thrown out 
by the House of Lords. The chief work of par- 
liament in the legislative sphere consists of the 
discussion and amendment of measures proposed 
by the government; parliament in effect has no 
real control over the making of laws, and no con- 
trol at all over the way in which they are carried 



HOW PRUSSIA RULES GERMANY 113 

out. Votes of money also require the approval of 
parliament, but it is the accepted doctrine that as 
the elected house cannot by itself repeal a law, it 
has no power to refuse the money necessary to 
carry it out and therefore cannot withhold the 
supplies necessary for the conduct of government. 
As Bismarck acted on this principle and success- 
fully defied parliament during a series of years,^ 
it may be said to be established. 

The Prussian system therefore briefly is, that 
the King carries on the whole government, 
appoints all the officers of state without any con- 
trol from parliament, can collect all the taxes 
necessary for this purpose whether parliament 
wishes or no, though he must get its approval for 
new taxes to meet new expenditure; and prac- 
tically proposes all new laws for parliament's ap- 
proval, while parliament is unable to force any 
law upon him that he dislikes. This is not what 
we mean by self-government; it is government by 
a king working through a highly trained body of 
officials who are completely under his control, and 
only very slightly checked by a parliament one 
of whose two Houses is largely nominated by 
himself. 

Over all the twenty-five governments and legis- 
latures of the various states, including Prussia, 
are placed the government and legislature of the 
Empire. The Imperial Government consists of 
the Emperor, with his chief minister the Chan- 
cellor; the Bundesrat, or Federal Council; and the 

* See above, pp. 103-4. 



114 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

Reichstag, or Imperial Chamber. This govern- 
ment has the right of making laws for the whole 
Empire, which override the legislation of the sep- 
arate states, but are generally speaking carried into 
effect not by imperial officials, but by the officials 
of the states. Thus the number of imperial offi- 
cials is small; but the fact that the carrying out 
of imperial laws is entrusted to state officials really 
means that the imperial government has wide 
powers of supervision over the officers of the 
various states. The small number of imperial 
officials thus means not a restriction but actually 
an increase of the power of the imperial govern- 
ment. 

The Reichstag is elected on a very democratic 
franchise. Its approval is necessary for all new 
laws, but these also require the approval of the 
Bundesrat and the Emperor; and in practice new 
laws of importance are always proposed by the 
government, which usually gets them through by 
making bargains with some of the numerous party^ 
groups into which the Reichstag is divided. If it 
fails to do this, the government can at any time 
dissolve the Reichstag and get a new one elected, 
which has nearly always proved to be more amen- 
able — especially if the electoral press campaign has 
been managed with the skill usually displayed by 
the German government. The Reichstag also has 
in theory control over taxation. But as most of 
the revenue laws are permanent, and cannot be 
altered without the consent of the Emperor, and as 
most of the items of expenditure (above all that of 



HOW PRUSSIA RULES GERMANY ns 

the army) are practically fixed and must be met, 
the control of the Reichstag over finance is really 
very ineffective. It is rather a debating society 
than a ruling parliament. 

Much more important than the Reichstag is 
the Bundesrat, or Federal Council, which is unlike 
any other body in the world. It consists of fifty- 
eight members; Prussia has seventeen members, 
the other states a smaller number varying from six 
in the case of Bavaria to one in the case of most 
of the smaller states. The members of the Bund- 
esrat are not popularly elected, but are nominated 
by the governments of the various states. They 
have no freedom in discussion or voting, but must 
vote according to the instructions of their govern- 
ments, and all the votes of any one state must 
always be cast on the same side. The government 
of any state may give to one man, and even to 
a representative of another state, the right of 
casting all its votes. 

Prussia really controls twenty votes, seventeen 
for herself and three for two of the smaller states 
which have passed under her control. All these 
twenty representatives are nominated by the King 
of Prussia (i.e., by the Emperor), and mtist vote 
according to his instructions. If Prussia can se- 
cure ten votes from the other states — and she 
nearly always can — she is certain of having her 
own way in the Bundesrat. The President of the 
Bundesrat is the Chancellor, who is always a 
Prussian and is the nominee and representative 
of the Emperor as well as the head of the imperial 



ii6 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

government; he is usually also the head of the 
Prussian ministry; and in all these capacities he is 
practically the controller of the Bundesrat. The 
Bundesrat has various standing committees. The 
chairman of each of these with one exception must 
by law be one of the Prussian representatives, who 
are of course the nominees of the Emperor. 

Prussia has still another and very remarkable 
privilege. Its seventeen members (that is, the 
Emperor) have the right of vetoing any proposed 
change in laws or taxation even if there is an over- 
whelming majority in its favour in the Reichstag, 
and a majority also in the Bundesrat. Thus it 
is plain that the Bundesrat, while nominally a 
means for maintaining the rights of the separate 
states, is really a very ingenious device for secur- 
ing the control of the King of Prussia and his 
government over the whole of Germany. 

This remarkable body sits in secret, so that it 
is remarkably free from the influence of public 
opinion; and its powers are enormously wider 
than those of the Reichstag. It draws up the 
Budget and most of the laws submitted to the 
Reichstag; and they return for its approval when 
the Reichstag has discussed them. It issues ordi- 
nances to give effect to laws. It appoints the 
judges. It has considerable powers of supervision 
over administration in all parts of the Empire. 
It decides disputes between imperial and state 
officials. In short, it is in some ways the pivot 
on which the imperial government turns. It has 
been described as the most important body in the 



HOW PRUSSIA RULES GERMANY ii7 

Empire, and that is true. It has also been de- 
scribed as a mere nullity; that too is true, because 
it acts almost entirely at the dictation of the Prus- 
sian government. 

Lastly we must consider the position of the 
Emperor, who is always, by the provision of the 
constitution, the King of Prussia for the time 
being. We have seen that as King of Prussia he 
nominates the non-hereditary members of the 
Prussian House of Lords, and appoints and 
dismisses at his pleasure, without any control by 
parliament, all the Prussian ministers, and through 
them all the officials of the Prussian state. We 
have seen that as Emperor he dictates the votes 
of the twenty members of the Bundesrat whom 
Prussia nominates, and, by his influence over 
grand dukes and other minor princes, is nearly 
always able to secure that most of the non- 
Prussian members of the Bundesrat shall receive 
instructions in accordance with his will. He also 
appoints and dismisses at his pleasure the Imperial 
Chancellor, who is President of the Bundesrat, and 
is responsible for the whole sphere of imperial 
government, home and foreign, all imperial min- 
isters and officers being under his control. 

The powers of the Chancellor are so immense 
under the system as Bismarck devised it, that 
he may easily, in favourable circumstances, make 
himself the dictator of the Empire, as Bismarck 
did. But he cannot do so unless by the Emperor's 
will. Bismarck, for all his enormous prestige, 
lost all his power at a stroke in 1890 when the 



ii8 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

young Emperor William II decided that he was 
going to rule as well as reign. Once since then 
a Chancellor has shown some independence, when 
Prince Biilow publicly rebuked the Emperor for 
his indiscreet utterances. But Prince Biifow's 
power did not survive this daring; and there is 
no doubt that the Emperor himself has really 
ruled Germany since 1890, the Chancellor being 
merely his mouthpiece. Under the terms of the 
constitution the Emperor is responsible for the 
foreign policy of the Empire, and has the power 
of declaring war with the assent of the Bundesrat. 
The Reichstag may discuss foreign policy and war, 
but has no power to interfere. 

So far the German system is not unlike that 
which existed in England in the time of the Tudors, 
and which we are accustomed to describe as " the 
Tudor despotism." 

But the greatest power of the Emperor is his 
control of the army, and this has no parallel in 
Tudor England, which had no regular army. In 
regard to the army neither the Chancellor, nor 
the Bundesrat, and least of all the Reichstag, have 
anything to say. When we remember how vital 
a place the army has always taken in the Prussian 
state, it becomes clear that in the Emperor's abso- 
lute mastery of the army we shall find the real 
centre of gravity of the German Empire. 

According to the constitution every male Ger- 
man is liable to military service, though not all 
need be called up; and when the citizen under- 
takes his service he must take an oath of absolute 



HOW PRUSSIA RULES GERMANY 119 

obedience and loyalty to the Emperor. He re- 
mains a member of the army till he reaches the 
age of 39, and in that capacity continues to be 
subject to the Emperor's special and personal 
authority, in which no other organ of the state 
has any share. The constitution provides that the 
army in all the states shall be organised on the 
Prussian model, and shall be, in war and peace, 
under the Emperor's absolute control. He appoints 
all the higher officers, except in Bavaria, and in 
nearly all the states he appoints the lower officers 
as well. Even over the army of Bavaria, which 
retains some independence, the Emperor has the 
right of inspection in peace; and as soon as war 
is declared it passes under his absolute command. 

The headship of the army is indeed the main- 
spring of the Emperor's power, as much as it 
was the mainspring of the power of Napoleon or 
Caesar. For in the Prussian view, which is now 
the accepted view of all Germany, the army is not 
merely the heart and soul of the nation, it is the 
nation, in its most vital aspect. To-day, almost 
as fully as in the time of Frederick the Great, 
it is true that according to the Prussian view, the 
state almost exists for the sake of the army, and 
the army exists for the extension of Power. 

Thus, in spite of its superficially democratic 
form, in spite of its actively debating Reichstag 
and its numerous Socialist representatives, the 
German Empire is fundamentally a monarchical 
and a militarist state, a reproduction, on an en- 
larged and modernised scale, of the older Prussia. 



120 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

Its government is dominated by the Prussian 
royal house, with its long and unchanging tradi- 
tions of power pursued by force and fraud, and 
the main instruments of this authority are the 
members of the old Prussian nobility and the old 
Prussian bureaucracy, reinforced by correspond- 
ing classes from the rest of Germany whose mem- 
bers have been trained for half a century in the 
Prussianized army and civil service. 

A government so constituted is not likely to be 
transformed in its spirit and methods merely by 
the fact that by means of these methods it has 
achieved a great success. On the contrary, from 
the moment when Bismarck succeeded in impos- 
ing the dominion of Prussia upon the rest of Ger- 
many, and in impregnating the German people 
with Prussian ideals, it might be taken for certain 
that the pursuit of Power by Force and Fraud 
would continue on a greater scale, as soon as the 
process of assimilation was completed. 

That is the immediate conclusion which follows 
from our survey of the German system of govern- 
ment. Another conclusion is that this system is 
by its very nature fundamentally hostile to the 
ideals of liberty and self-government towards 
which we have hoped that the civilised world was 
progressing. The war into which that government 
has plunged the world is very certainly as much 
a war for the ideal of self-government as it is a 
war for national freedom, for honour, and for the 
sanctity of treaties. 



CHAPTER V 

RECENT GERMAN POLICY 

WE have discussed the Prussian theory as to 
what constitutes the true greatness and the 
main purpose of a state. We have seen this theory 
very fully exemplified in the history of Prussia; 
we have seen it engaged in a conflict with the 
opposite ideals of intellectual Germany, achieving 
a victory and culminating in the establishment of 
the German Empire. We have seen that this 
empire is effectively controlled by Prussia, and is 
now permeated by the Prussian spirit.' A govern- 
ment with such guiding principles, such a tradi- 
tion, and such a background was inevitably bound 
to pursue a policy in keeping with its past. With 
these things in mind, and with the further illumi- 
nation provided by the events of 1914, we are now 
in a position to analyse German policy during the 
last generation. 

During the last twenty years of Bismarck's 
Chancellorship (1871 — 1890) he maintained an 
unbroken peace. He often said that Germany 
would henceforth be the best friend of peace, 
because she was a " satiated power," having got 
all that she needed. Perhaps he meant this. For 
although he projected a cynical attack on France 



122 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

in 1875, merely because she seemed to be recover- 
ing too fast and had better be "bled white" 
before she became strong enough to be threaten- 
ing, he would have defended this as a safeguard 
of future peace. Possibly the old Titan was be- 
coming weary; possibly his mind had always been 
so concentrated on the question of European power 
that wider issues had no interest for him; possibly 
he felt that Germany must give all her attention 
for a time to internal organisation, which certainly 
presented many difficult problems during these 
years. But whatever the reason, his weight in 
this period was always thrown on the side of 
peace. 

For the maintenance of peace Bismarck pinned 
his faith to a remarkable system of European 
alliances which he created. In 1879 he made a 
defensive alliance with Austria, whereby each 
power was to help the other if attacked by Russia. 
This was developed into the Triple Alliance by 
the addition of Italy in 1883; but Italy's under- 
taking was also purely defensive, and was meant 
to guard against France. That Bismarck had, at 
any rate in Eastern Europe, no aggressive inten- 
tions, was shown by the " Reinsurance " treaty 
with Russia in 1884, whereby Germany and Russia 
undertook to come to one another's aid if attacked 
by Austria. The making of this treaty shows that 
the Austro-German relations were as yet far from 
intimate; and although the " Reinsurance " was 
soon allowed to lapse, Bismarck always attached 
great importance to maintaining friendly relations 



RECENT GERMAN POLICY 123 

with Russia. He certainly hated the idea of a 
war about Balkan questions, which, he said, were 
not worth the life of a single Grenadier. With 
England also he kept on good terms. He would 
not annex South- West Africa, for example, until 
he was sure that England did not want it. 

Nor did Bismarck take much interest in colonial 
questions. Though most of the existing German 
colonies were acquired under his regime, during 
the eighties, he only took them under the rising 
pressure of German opinion, and to the end of his 
life insisted that he was " no colony man.'* In 
this attitude he was in fact out of touch with the 
rising tide. The new direction which German 
policy was to take was already shaping itself, 
and it was for this reason that Bismarck's fall 
in 1890 was, on the whole, so easily accepted by his 
countr)nTien. He did not share in the grow- 
ing, glowing dream of Germany as a world- 
power. 

The forces which were making for this new 
development were already at work in Bismarck's 
time. The population of Germany was increasing 
at an extraordinarily rapid rate, and thousands of 
emigrants were every year pouring out of the 
country. The states whom Germany regarded as 
her equals — Russia, the United States, England]^ 
even France^ — all possessed lands where their sur- 
plus population could find room without losing 
their citizenship : but the German emigrant almost 
always found his way to America or the British 
colonies, where he learnt a new language, and 



124 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

where his descendants were for ever lost to their 
fatherland. That was a grievance which was felt 
with increasing bitterness, especially among a peo- 
ple who believed that the greatness of their state 
depended upon military force, and that the effect- 
iveness of military force was ultimately in pro- 
portion to the available manhood of the state. It 
naturally led Germans to demand colonies of their 
own, to which their sons could go and still remain 
Germans. 

They got some colonies in the eighties, but the 
German emigrant firmly declined to go near them; 
for nearly all the most desirable fields for colonisa- 
tion were already in the possession of other states, 
and especially of Britain. Clearly, if the German 
race was to have a free chance for expansion, it 
must obtain command of some of these colonisable 
territories. The demand for colonies on this ground 
was already strong in Bismarck's time, and it has 
grown steadily stronger ever since. Yet the 
reason for it was already passing away. German 
emigration has almost ceased in recent years, partly 
because of the immense development of industry, 
partly because the rate of increase of the popula- 
tion has steadily declined, in accordance with the 
beneficent rule that the more prosperous a people 
is the more slowly its numbers increase. But 
if this argument for the acquisition of colonies is 
disappearing, the irritation which it caused still 
exists, and it forms to-day one of the reasons most 
often advanced for the necessity of an aggressive 
colonial policy. 



RECl NT GERMAN POLICY 125 

This motive for world-power was reinforced by 
another during the same period. German ship- 
ping has risen since 1871 from a very humble con- 
dition to be the nearest rival to the shipping of 
Britain. Before the outbreak of war in 19 14 there 
were German ships in all the seas of the world, 
but wherever they went they had to trade in 
foreign harbours, and an exasperatingly large 
proportion of these harbours was British. German 
industry has thriven even more remarkably than 
iGerman shipping. It wants raw materials; it 
wants markets. It has to depend for both upon 
foreign states, and in a large degree upon the far- 
flung British dominions. It seemed but a small 
consolation that all the ports and markets under 
the control of the British government were thrown 
as freely open to German as to British traders: 
the German, having adopted a protective system, 
longed to have control of markets and of sources 
of raw material where he could establish a monop- 
oly. He was also convinced that in indirect ways 
the political connexions between the British Em- 
pire and the mother country gave a great advan- 
tage to British trade. 

The only way to rectify this was to establish a 
German Colonial Empire like the British. But 
the attempt to do this by occupying the disengaged ^^ 
regions of the world had come to nothing : even * 
to-day none of the German colonies can so much 
as pay its own way, except the small but rich 
district of Togoland. That is, no doubt, largely 
due to the fact that the rigid and elaborate system 



126 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST J^ERMANY 

of the Prussian bureaucracy, with its swarm of 
officials and its inelastic regulations, is singularly 
ill-suited to the needs of raw and backward 
regions. But perhaps the German can scarcely be 
blamed for not realising this, and for attributing 
the failure of his colonies to the undoubted fact 
that the regions in which they had been established 
were unfavourable. How, then, could the de- 
ficiency be rectified? Clearly by the application 
of the doctrine of Power, in the good old Prussian 
way to which all the advances hitherto made were 
due. 'And the obvious object of attack was Eng- 
land. Already in Bismarck's time the hatred of 
England as the inevitable foe of Germany was 
being preached, by Treitschke among others. Eng- 
land, indeed, was a Teutonic power (though that 
is a very debatable point) and therefore akin to 
Germany. For that reason, we have been recently 
told, it is " treacherous " of England to oppose 
Germany. But the doctrine of treachery is one- 
sided. It does not apply to Germany, and the 
necessity of an attack on England has been 
preached for thirty years. 

The Germans, as we have seen, are a very 
academically-minded people, much under the 
influence of professors, and fond of reading big 
books. For that reason their political ideas have 
always been greatly affected by the study of his- 
tory, especially as interpreted in the light of the 
fashionable formulae and theories of the moment. 
During the last half-century they have been en- 
tranced by a view of their own history, drawn 



RECENT GERMAN POLICY 127 

largely from the work of passionately patriotic 
students of mediaeval Germany like Giesebrecht, 
which has become the basis of a sort of prophetic 
vision of the future. We have heard a great deal 
in recent years about " Germany's Historic Mis- 
sion " : General Bernhardi himself has a chapter 
on it. What it means is briefly this. Once upon a 
time the Romans were the rulers of the world, and 
the masters and guides of culture and civilisation. 
They fell from their high estate because they 
lost their virility, their fighting force. The people 
who were destined to overthrow them were the 
Germans; and the heroic age of German history 
shows this people as lords of western civilisation, 
with their kings enthroned over all the west as 
Holy Roman Emperors. But the German power 
fell asunder for various reasons, and in part 
because the Germans themselves were not yet 
ready to be the masters of civilisation, having 
not yet fully developed their culture. God, who 
had chosen them for this great work, therefore 
gave them a discipline of six hundred years, 
during which, though politically disunited, they 
re-created Christianity through the preaching of 
Luther, and later created the new culture of the 
modern world, its philosophy, its music, its natural 
science. Then, being ready for their task, they 
regained their political unity under! the strong 
leadership of Prussia; and now they are ready to 
fulfil their " historic mission " — that of taking the 
place which the Romans once held, as the masters, 
organisers and guides of the whole civilised 



128 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

world/ That is Germany's historic mission as 
it is expressed by many quite sincere fanatics. 

Such preposterous megalomania, based upon 
such grotesque misinterpretation of history, would 
not have any influence in any other country. It 
has a real influence among the bookish, theory- 
loving Germans, already more than a little intoxi- 
cated by the easy victories of the mid-nineteenth 
century and by the very remarkable material pros- 
perity which has followed them. Nearly all Ger- 
mans already believe that they are irresistible as 
soldiers, that they are the best organisers in the 
world, that they are unsurpassable as traders, that 
their Culture marks the very highest point ever 
reached by the human race, that, in short, they 
have nothing to learn from any other people and 
everything to teach other peoples. And a nation 
so believing is a ready prey even for such non- 
sense as the talk about the " historic mission." But 
when such beliefs are coincident with a belief in 
the gospel of force, they become extremely danger- 
ous to the world. 

The Germans do not only study their own 
history; they have long done us the honour of 
paying a great deal of attention to the history 
of Britain. 

Time was (especially in the first half of the 
nineteenth century) when it was mainly the his- 

^ It is worth noting that the Kaiser is reported as having 
told his troops, in a speech since the beginning of the war, 
that a German victory would lead to a German-Roman em- 
pire of the civilised world, to the great advantage of hu- 
manity. 



RECENT GERMAN POLICY 129 

tory of British institutions which attracted their 
attention. In those days England was an object 
of respect, even of veneration, as the inventor of 
the methods of self-government, as the mother of 
liberty. But (as we have seen) the admirers of 
British methods failed entirely to achieve either 
unity or liberty for Germany; and when the task 
in which ^ they had failed was triumphantly 
achieved by Bismarck on quite other lines, and by 
purely Prussian methods, the respect for British 
ideas and institutions was rapidly destroyed, and 
even turned into contempt. Power, not liberty, 
became the object of veneration. 

But now another aspect of British history be- 
gan to attract their attention: the steps by which 
Britain acquired her extraordinary empire, and 
her trading supremacy. The puzzling thing here 
was, that the doctrine of Power seemed to be falsi- 
fied, for here was the most remarkable Empire in 
the world in the possession of a state which had 
always been quite contemptible in a military sense, 
and had never devoted her whole resources to the 
organisation of military force. The doctrine of 
Power being, of course, indisputably true, how 
was this paradox to be explained? Obviously the 
explanation was that the British Empire had been 
built up not by honest Force, but by low cunning, 
by constantly intriguing to keep the really virile 
Powers of Europe at war with one another, and by 
seizing all the eligible quarters of the globe while 
their backs were turned. Modern British history 
was ingeniously interpreted in the light of this 



130 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

theory, and Britain came to seem a very hateful 
and contemptible power. 

Again, the scientific German student of govern- 
ment, accustomed to and proud of the rigid order 
and system of Prussian rule, could not but be 
struck by the total absence of symmetry and sys- 
tem in the organisation of the British Empire, the 
extraordinary variety in the conditions existing in 
its various parts, and the remarkable laxity and 
indefiniteness of the bonds by which it was held 
together. This seemed (to the believer in the 
doctrine of power) a proof of the weakness of the 
fabric: it seemed to be a slipshod and ramshackle 
structure, which would fall to pieces at a touch. 
How could a Prussian believe that the almost 
complete independence enjoyed by the great self- 
governing colonies was due to any other cause 
than the inability of a nerveless and decadent 
mother country to enforce her sway? 

The true secret both of the creation and the 
organisation of the British Empire inevitably 
escaped the German, for that secret is to be found 
in something alien to German civilisation. It is 
because a training of a thousand years has bred 
into the very bones of the British peoples the habit 
and instinct of self-government that bodies of 
Britons at great distances from home have found 
it easy to work together in cordial co-operation, 
either in the building up of new settlements or in 
the government and reorganisation of old and 
peopled realms, without having to call constantly 
for the aid and instructions of the home govern- 



RECENT GERMAN POLICY 131 

ment, and without having to be guided by fixed 
rules and regulations. It is the same reason which 
has made it seem natural to Britons at home that 
their daughter-nations should as early as possible 
take control of their own destinies, and which 
has persuaded them that variety of method and 
diversities of institutions are desirable in them- 
selves, while rigid uniformity is deadening. And 
it is this common belief of a whole race in liberty, 
in self-government, in life-giving diversity, which 
forms the real bond between these communities, a 
bond as strong as it is seemingly slight. 

But to the German mind, accustomed to uni- 
versal system and order imposed from above, all 
this could only appear as evidence of slackness, 
inefficiency and weakness. The believers in Real- 
politik concluded that the British Empire was an 
unreal thing, because it was not based on Force, 
and because it lacked System. Convinced that the 
possession of colonies was a great source of wealth 
and power, they also felt sure that they could, 
by\ the same methods which had welded the 
Prussian State and the German Empire, build a 
far firmer, more systematic, more red fabric, if 
only the opportunity were open to them. And 
increasingly they began to long for the oppor- 
tunity, and to resolve to make it. 

It was in the last decade of the nineteenth 
century that these ambitions definitely became the 
dominating factor in German foreign policy; and 
the man who has above all represented and ex- 
pressed them is the Emperor William II. This 



132 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

prince, though he has been the most loquacious 
and the most self-assertive public man of his time, 
has remained something of an enigma. He has 
always proclaimed himself the friend of peace, 
and this claim has been accepted by most of his 
subjects, and perhaps by the general opinion of 
the non-German world. Yet it has been during 
the years when he has controlled German policy 
that the constant increase of German armaments 
by land and sea has turned all Europe into an 
armed camp. And if he has helped to surmount 
the successive European crises which have kept 
our nerves on edge during the whole of his reign, 
the frequency of these crises has been indisputably 
due to the blusterous and bullying methods of Ger- 
man diplomacy under his direction — the methods 
of the " mailed fist,'^ and the " shining armour," 
and the Panther making its sudden appearance at 
Agadir. William II perhaps believes that he has 
loved peace and ensued it, sacrificing to it every- 
thing but the right of Germany to " a place in 
the sun": but if so his view of what that place 
should be has not been so reasonable as to make 
the relations of other states with Germany easy 
or pleasant. It is indeed impossible to forget that 
for twenty years past the behaviour of Germany 
under her peace-loving Emperor has been such as 
to reduce Europe to a state of tension very dan- 
gerous to peace, and that its issue has been the 
war of 19 14. 

William II has for five and twenty years suc- 
ceeded in holding the attention of the world by 



RECENT GERMAN POLICY 133 

his recklessness, his restlessness, his shallow 
versatility, his colossal egoism; but beneath all 
this there has always been perceptible a very clear 
purpose, a very assured belief: the belief that he 
has been chosen by the tribal God of Prussia to 
lead Germany in the next step of her irresistible 
career — the step from the position of the greatest 
power in Europe to the position of a dominating 
world-power. The policy of Germany during his 
reign, in its daring, its brusqueness, its domineer- 
ing methods, its sudden tacks and veers, its under- 
lying fixity of purpose, has manifestly been the 
policy of William II. It reflects his character; 
but in its aims, if not always in its methods, it has 
been in accord with the vaulting dreams and am- 
bitions of the German people. 

The creation of a fleet was the necessary con- 
dition of the formation of a world-empire, and 
the making of the German fleet has undoubtedly 
been mainly the work of William II. " He de- 
voted all the power of the throne and all the 
strength of his own personality," says his Chan- 
cellor, Prince Biilow, " to the attainment of this 
end . . . He . . championed the building of the 
German fleet at the very moment when the 
German people had to come to a decision about 
their future, and when . . . Germany had the 
last chance of forging the sea-weapons that she 
needed." ^ Undoubtedly the first great Navy Act 
of 1897-98 which began the modem German navy 
was carried mainly by his advocacy; and the 
^ " Imperial Germany," 18. 



134 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

diminishing opposition in the Reichstag to the 
rapidly increasing expenditure demanded by its 
successors shows that he anticipated the trend 
of German opinion. It was he who proclaimed 
that the future of Germany lay upon the water; 
he who laid claim to the Admiralty of the 
Atlantic. 

But the fleet was only a means; and the end 
for which it was designed, the replacement of 
British by German supremacy upon the seas, was 
a rather remote one. Meantime, while the " sea- 
weapon that Germany needed " was being forged, 
her ruler was eagerly looking for opportunities 
to extend German influence in the ends of the 
earth, and if possible to acquire desirable colonies 
when opportunity offered. 

The most obviously desirable region of the earth 
uncontrolled by any of the great powers was 
South America, many of whose smiling lands were 
misruled by very ineflicient governments. Here 
there were thousands of German settlers; they 
were encouraged to keep together and not to merge 
in the surrounding population by means of 
schools and other equipments subsidised by Ger- 
many. Undoubtedly the German government has 
hoped, and perhaps still hopes, to establish a 
claim to South American dominion. But the 
Monroe doctrine of the United States stood in 
the way, and when Germany tried to intervene in 
Venezuela her government was reminded that the 
United States still clung to this doctrine. William 
II has made no secret of his distaste for the 



RECENT GERMAN POLICY I35 

Monroe doctrine. But the time for attacking it 
had not yet come: the United States, though a 
negligible power in a military sense, is not an 
easy power to attack from a European base, 
especially while the British fleet is unimpaired; 
and South American ambitions have been re- 
luctantly abandoned by the German government 
for the time being. The Spanish-American War 
showed indeed how little love for the American 
state is felt in Germany, and for a time relations 
were " clouded,'' as Prince Biilow puts it, " by the 
way in which part of the English and American 
press interpreted certain incidents which had 
occurred between our squadrons and the Ameri- 
can fleet off Manila.'' But these " incidents " were 
things to forget; and a laborious friendliness has 
ever since striven to wipe them out. 

More promising seemed the chance of making 
some profit in South Africa, where a semi-inde- 
pendent " Teutonic " people, who would naturally 
fall within the German orbit, were in a state of 
very strained relations with Britain. The noto- 
rious Kruger telegram, which congratulated the 
old President upon repelling the Jameson raid 
" without the aid of friendly powers," and the 
steady importation of German armaments into the 
Transvaal, showed how ready Germany would be 
to obtain a footing in this eminently desirable 
region, so well suited for European settlers. Only 
the opening of the archives in the distant future 
will reveal how near a war between Britain and 
Germany was in 1899. The Emperor has claimed 



136 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

that he was the preserver of the peace in this 
juncture. If the claim is true, it was because he 
realised, and seized the opportunity to make Ger- 
many realise, that there was no prospect of a suc- 
cessful attack on Britain until the German fleet 
had been vastly increased. The German Navy 
Act of 1900, which doubled the fleet at a blow, was 
the outcome of the South African War. 

Meanwhile Germany had been turning her at- 
tention to the Far East, where prospects not only 
of trade expansion but of territorial acquisition 
seemed to be opening. The defeat of China by 
Japan in 1894 had forced Europe to realise the 
existence of a new power which might be able to 
prevent expansion in this region. Germany ac- 
cordingly joined Russia and France in forbidding 
the Japanese annexation of Port Arthur and the 
peninsula behind it, and the Emperor began to 
furbish up his rhetoric to make Europe realise 
the Yellow Peril. 

A twofold advantage could be reaped for Ger- 
many in this field. Russia could be encouraged 
to turn her attention to the Far East, thus leaving 
the field clear in the Near East; the astonishing 
result of the Russo-Japanese War was probably 
never anticipated, but it had its compensation in 
making it safe to disregard Russia for some 
years. And Germany also hoped to make her 
own direct profit in this region. In 1897 the 
murder of two German missionaries afforded her 
a pretext for a characteristically high-handed act, 
the seizure of Kiao-Chau by the " mailed fist." 



RECENT GERMAN POLICY I37 

Three years later the Boxer rising and the 
siege of the legations in Peking seemed to afford 
another chance of brandishing the mailed fist be- 
fore the eyes of the wondering East. Germany 
delayed the common action of the powers for the 
relief of the legations in order to press her claim 
to the supreme command of the expedition; the 
other powers — all much more vitally concerned, 
but anxious to save valuable lives — shrugged 
their shoulders and smiled and yielded; and 
Field-Marshal von Waldersee was appointed as 
generalissimo of the forces of the civilised world 
against the Yellow Peril. The troops which 
were to exhibit Germany as the leader of the 
civilised world were theatrically told by the 
Emperor to make the German name as terrible 
as the name of Attila and his Huns. Their 
commander arrived too late to take part in the 
relief; but there was still time to play the part of 
Attila, and it was thoroughly done. No prac- 
tical results of value, however, apart from the 
seizure of Kiao-Chau, had been gained by Ger- 
many in the Far East: she had only made her 
drum-and-trumpet entrance on the arena of the 
world-powers in the role of Bombastes Furioso, 
turned Japan into a bitter enemy, and shown the 
world that the only limits to her aggression were 
the limits to her physical power. But nearer home 
she had realised and was beginning to pursue a 
more promising line of action. 

The main field of German activity and ambition 
during the last twenty years has been the decaying 



138 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

Turkish Empire, whose problems had seemed to 
Bismarck not important enough to deserve the life 
of a Pomeranian grenadier. Here at least was a 
field not yet fully occupied by other powers: a 
field which had been fortunately kept partly free 
for German occupation by the mutual jealousies of 
the powers themselves. 

Russia had fought many Turkish wars, but 
made small profit out of them, only creating a 
group of small states — Rumania, Serbia, Bulgaria 
and Greece — which she liked to regard as her 
vassals, but which showed a tendency to play an 
independent part. Austria, the ancient rival of 
Russia in this region, had, without fighting, done 
better; for in 1878, largely by German support, 
she had been allowed to undertake the task of 
governing the restless Serbs of Bosnia and 
Herzegovina. But she seemed no nearer to her 
ancient ambition of controlling the Balkans and 
reaching the Aegean and the fine port of 
Salonika: the thorny little nationalities stood in 
her path, especially Serbia, which distrusted her 
as the ruler of the Bosnian Serbs. Britain, always 
lucky or cunning, had drifted into the control 
of Egypt and occupied Cyprus, but her position 
in Egypt was rendered difHcult by the rights pos- 
sessed by all the other powers and by the jealousy 
of France. France herself had long since occupied 
Algeria and Tunis, which indeed were no longer 
even nominally part of the Turkish Empire; she 
had been even encouraged by Bismarck since 1881 
to occupy herself in African expansion. Finally 



RECENT GERMAN POLICY I39 

Italy, jealous of French ascendancy in the Medi- 
terranean, was looking longingly at the coast of 
Tripoli. 

Was Germany alone to have no share in the 
inheritance of the sick man? There remained 
much valuable territory at his disposal: the 
remnants of the Balkans, Asia Minor, Syria and 
Palestine, and all the rich valley of the Euphrates. 
Here was a fine field for German activity : a field 
in which she could easily co-operate with her ally 
Austria, a field in which a continuous Germanic 
sphere of influence might be built up, reaching 
from the Danube to the Persian Gulf, and coming 
within range of the fascinating realm of India. 
If the Turk could be brought into the German 
orbit, his alliance might be of incalculable value: 
not only had he much to give, but being at the 
head of the Mohammedan religion, he might be 
used as a means of creating trouble for the 
" jealous rivals " of Germany who ruled over 
Mohammedan subjects — England in Egypt and 
India, France in Northern Africa. The gran- 
diose projects thus adumbrated have unquestion- 
ably played the major part in determining German 
foreign policy under William II. They have been 
the cause of the increasing intimacy of the alliance 
between Germany and Austria. They have led to 
the break-up of the long-standing friendship be- 
tween Germany and Russia. And they have played 
a very large part in bringing about the war of 
1914. 

The great scheme involved four things. First, 



140 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

the extension to the utmost possible degree of 
the direct power and the indirect influence of 
Austria in the Balkan peninsula. Second, the 
extrusion of Russian influence in this region. 
Third, the establishment of a dominant Germanic 
influence among the Turks, such as to ensure that 
the military strength of the Turkish Empire 
might be counted on as an addition to the resources 
of the Triple Alliance. And, fourth, the securing 
of German predominance in the commercial ex- 
ploitation of Turkey in Asia, and especially of 
Asia Minor and Mesopotamia. 

The first aim, the extension of Austrian influ- 
ence in the Balkans, mainly turned on the relations 
between Austria and Serbia, for this little state 
lay directly between the Austrian territories and 
the desired port of Salonika; and through Serbia 
ran the great railway from Vienna to Constanti- 
nople, with its important branch to Salonika, which 
was controlled by Austro-German capital. It was 
vital, therefore, to the great scheme that Serbian 
policy should be under Austrian control; that 
Serbia should be, if possible, reduced to a vassal 
state of Austria. 

This seemed not diflicult to secure, since the 
Austrian lands dominated Serbia on two sides, 
the west and the north, while on the east lay the 
hostile state of Bulgaria, by which Serbia had re- 
cently been defeated in war. Moreover Austria 
formed the chief outlet for the trade of Serbia. 
On the other hand, the Serbian Radical of Na- 
tionalist party was strongly anti-Austrian, because 



RECENT GERMAN POLICY 141 

by her control of Bosnia with its purely Serbian 
population Austria was the obvious obstacle to 
the dream of a greater Serbia which they enter- 
tained. The Radicals looked to Russia to help 
them in this cause, and meanwhile feared nothing 
so much as the subordination of their country to 
Austrian interests. Hence Belgrade was for a 
long period the scene of constant intrigues between 
Russia and Austria. 

On the whole Austrian policy was for a long 
time successful. Austria had been able to pose 
as the protector of Serbia when her intervention 
in 1885 saved her from the consequences of her 
humiliating defeat by Bulgaria. During the 
following twenty years, down to 1903, the domi- 
nant court party in Serbia was as definitely pro- 
Austrian as the Radicals were anti- Austrian; and 
the last two worthless kings of the Obrenovitch 
family, Milan and Alexander, under whom Serbia 
lost all the advance that she had earlier made, 
were practically Austrian creatures. This is what 
lies behind the disgusting murder of Alexander 
and his wife in 1903. Though it was the work 
of a very contemptible clique, it could be repre- 
sented as a patriotic and nationalist act; and the 
new king whom it brought to the throne, Peter 
Karageorgevitch, seemed to stand for the nation- 
alist cause, being descended from Kara-George, 
the hero of the successful Serbian rising against 
the Turks in 1804. 

The murder of 1903 was therefore a defeat for 
Austrian policy. In the following years the tide 



142 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

of nationalist sentiment steadily rose in Serbia, 
and spread over the borders among the Serbs of 
the administered territory of Bosnia, and even 
into the ancient Austrian province of Slavonia. 
After a few years it was possible for a deputation 
of leading men in these regions to assure the 
Austrian government that now only a few of the 
older men were loyal; all the younger men being 
Serbian in feeling and eager for the union of 
these Serb-provinces of Austria under the Serbian 
crown. So that, from 1903 onwards, Austria 
found herself drawn into increasingly difficult re- 
lations with Serbia; her earlier ascendancy was 
replaced by a definite hostility; and it became 
important, not only for the success of the great 
scheme, but also for the very security of the 
Austrian dominions themselves, that Serbia 
should somehow be reduced to subjection. 

This Austrian victory seemed to be as necessary 
for the success of German aims as for Austria 
herself, and therefore Germany and Austria were 
absolutely at one in striving for it. Yet here they 
found ranged against them a powerful national 
sentiment; and that, as Austria has repeatedly 
learnt, is a force not easy to subdue. In the years 
following 1903 Austria endeavoured to bring 
Serbia to heel by means of a fierce tariff war, 
from which Serbian trade suffered acutely; but it 
was quite unsuccessful in its main aims, and only 
added to the bitterness of anti- Austrian feeling 
among the Serbs. 

The second aim, that of the extrusion of 



RECENT GERMAN POLICY I43 

Russian influence in the Balkans, was not easy 
to secure, since all the Balkan states owed their 
independent existence to Russia, while Austria 
had always been the foe of national movements 
in the Balkans as elsewhere, and as recently as 
1878 the two Germanic powers had appeared as 
the chief obstacle to the greater freedom of the 
Balkan states. Moreover the German programme 
of friendship with the Turk could not but be re- 
garded with suspicion by the little states which 
had but recently and with difficulty escaped from 
the Turkish yoke. 

Yet circumstances were not altogether un- 
favourable. The increasing preoccupation of 
Russia with Far-Eastern and Chinese questions 
was very skilfully used. Germany joined Russia 
in forbidding the annexation of Port Arthur by 
Japan after the Japanese victory over China, and 
later encouraged Russia herself to seize this port, 
and to enter upon a programme of territorial ex- 
pansion in Manchuria; and when this led to the 
Russo-Japanese War, and the collapse of Russian 
miilitary prestige, and the outbreak of internal 
revolution in Russia, the influence of Russia in 
Balkan affairs, and her power to intervene effect- 
ively in this region, greatly declined. From 1905 
onwards the Germanic powers seemed to have 
almost a free field in the Balkans. 

Another favourable factor was the existence of 
German princes as rulers of Balkan states. Serbia 
and Montenegro are the only Balkan states ruled 
by native dynasties. Rumania, the strongest and 



144 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

most prosperous of these states, actually had a 
Hohenzollern king, whose services to his adopted 
country had been so great that he was able to 
exercise a very real personal influence. Pene- 
trated by the feeling of loyalty to the Hohen- 
zollern house, King Charles of Rumania had 
promised Bismarck, when he set out to rule his 
new realm in 1866, that his policy would always 
be governed by friendship for Germany, and since 
his death it has been made clear that he regarded 
himself as bound in honour to the German alliance. 
The natural policy of Rumania is anti-Austrian, 
since a large proportion of the Rumanian people 
are Austrian subjects, and pro-Russian, since the 
state owes its independent existence to Russia. 
But the influence of the Rumanian king was strong 
enough to counterbalance this; and when Ger- 
many entered upon an active intervention in 
Balkan affairs, it was a real advantage to be able to 
count at the least upon the friendly neutrality of 
the state which lies between Russia and the 
Danube. 

Again, the ruler of Bulgaria, Ferdinand of 
Saxe-Coburg, belonged to one of the minor Ger- 
man princely houses, and had been an officer in 
the Austrian army at the moment when he was 
selected for the Bulgarian throne. For that 
reason Russia long refused to recognise him; 
and though he later made friends with her, he 
has never been cordially pro-Russian. The bulk 
of the Bulgarian people regard Russia as their 
natural protector and ally, but there has always 



RECENT GERMAN POLICY 145 

been an anti-Russian party, and with this Ferdi- 
nand has on the whole been identified. Here also 
was a factor favourable to the German aims. 
Germany and Austria have accordingly steadily 
aimed at keeping Bulgaria alienated from Serbia, 
and at bringing about friendly relations between 
her and the Turks. It was under German influ- 
ence that in 1904 a Turko-Bulgarian convention 
was signed, and the same policy has since been 
consistently followed. It seemed by no means 
hopeless, therefore, that Serbia should be reduced 
to the condition of a vassal state of Austria, and 
that Rumania and Bulgaria should be, together 
with Turkey, drawn into the orbit of the Triple 
Alliance. And this would mean the total exclu- 
sion of Russian influence from the Balkan 
peninsula. 

The third aim, the establishment of German 
influence over the Turks, was the keystone of 
the arch in the great scheme, and German 
opinion has always attached the highest value to 
it. " Turkey," says Prince Biilow, who was Chan- 
cellor of the Empire while this programme was 
being put into operation, " was a useful and 
important link in the chain of our political 
relations . . . We have carefully cultivated good 
relations with Turkey and Islam . . . These 
relations are not of a sentimental nature." A 
Turkish alliance was indeed held to be indispen- 
sable not only as a means to the control of the 
Balkans, but as a preparation for the great 
struggle for world-predominance to which the 



146 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

German government was already looking for- 
ward. Prince Biilow, as becomes a Chancellor, 
speaks guardedly on this point; but General 
Bernhardi is more frank. " Turkey," he says, 
" is of paramount importance to us. She is our 
natural ally; it is emphatically our interest to 
keep in close touch with her . . . Turkey is the 
only power which can threaten England's position 
in Egypt, and thus menace the short sea-route to 
India. We ought to spare no sacrifices to secure 
this country as an ally .... Turkey's interests 
are ours." 

The beginning of this vitally important policy 
dates from 1889, when the Emperor paid a state 
visit to Constantinople. It was the first time that 
one of the great rulers of Christendom had been 
the guest of the Sultan, and from this moment 
German influence became increasingly predomi- 
nant at Constantinople, and the German ambassa- 
dor there. Baron Marschall von Bieberstein, be- 
came one of the most powerful influences in 
German foreign policy. Still more striking was 
the action of Germany in 1897, when the Cretans 
were clamouring for union with Greece, and the 
powers were trying to find a way out of the diffi- 
culty. Germany and Austria formally withdrew 
from the Concert of Europe when Prince George 
of Greece was appointed Governor of Crete, and 
the action was meant to intimate to Turkey that 
these powers were her true friends. Next year, 
when all Europe was horrified by the Armenian 
massacres, and Lord Salisbury was striving to 



RECENT GERMAN POLICY 147 

bring about a joint European intervention, it was 
Germany that blocked the way. The Emperor 
chose this amazing moment to pay another visit 
to Constantinople, and to lavish evidences of 
friendship upon Abdul Hamid. From Constanti- 
nople he went on to Palestine, and thence to 
Damascus, where he made a remarkable speech 
calling upon Mohammedans in all parts of the 
world to recognise that Germany was at all times 
their friend and protector. The majority of the 
Mohammedans in the world are subjects of Eng- 
land, Russia and France. 

From the close friendship thus struck up with 
Turkey Germany was able to reap great com- 
mercial advantages, and to make a long step 
towards her ambition of dominating the commer- 
cial exploitation of the Turkish Empire. During 
the *9o's German syndicates obtained many con- 
cessions for building Turkish railways, in several 
instances ousting British enterprises which were 
already at work; and in 1902-03 the great Bagdad 
railway scheme was launched, which was to ensure 
German commercial predominance throughout 
Asia Minor and the Euphrates valley. By 1908 
Germany definitely controlled nearly 1,000 miles 
of Turkish railways, and the main lines of the 
Oriental Railway Company (800 miles more) 
were under joint Austro-German control. Putting 
apart certain French concessions in Syria, and 
the long line in Arabia, Germany and Austria 
between them practically controlled the whole of 
the Turkish, and indeed of the Balkan, railway 



148 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

system. The Turkish Empire had become both 
politically and economically dependent upon the 
Germanic powers. To this must be added military 
tutelage, for the Turkish army had been under 
the training of German officers, headed by von 
der Goltz, since 1883, and the numbers and in- 
fluence of these officers increased steadily after 
the Greco-Turkish War of 1897, in which their 
tuition showed such happy results. At the open^ 
ing of the new century Germany might well feel 
that she had established her hegemony over 
the Balkans, and secured a useful support for 
the world-war to which she was looking for- 
ward. 

But the Balkan programme did not meet with 
uninterrupted success. In 1908 took place the 
Young Turkish movement, which involved the 
fall of the Kaiser's friend Abdul Hamid, and for 
a moment made the reforming Turks friendly to 
the liberal powers of the west. This, perhaps, was 
not serious. Most of the Young Turk leaders 
were soldiers, trained under von der Goltz, and 
very favourable to Germany: this was especially 
the case with the most vigorous among them, 
Enver Bey, and German influence soon reasserted 
its leadership. But more serious was the fact 
that two members of the Triple Alliance, Austria 
and Italy, seized the opportunity to enrich them- 
selves at the expense of the Turk — Austria by 
the annexation of Bosnia, which she had admin- 
istered since 1878, Italy by the seizure of Tripoli, 
followed by a Turco-Italian war in which the 



RECENT GERMAN POLICY 149 

Italian fleet appeared in the Aegean and annexed 
various islands. 

The Austrian annexation of Bosnia caused little 
trouble with the Turks, who had no prospect of 
ever regaining this territory. They accepted the 
situation so readily (in exchange for £2,000,000) 
that there is room for suspicion that the step was 
arranged beforehand. But it raised a storm of 
indignation in Serbia, which saw the last chance 
of a union between the two main groups of Serbs 
removed, and it led to that activity in anti- Austrian 
conspiracy which ended in the murder of the 
Archduke in June, 19 14. And as the annexation 
was a flagrant violation of the Treaty of Berlin, 
it nearly brought about a European war. But 
the occasion had been well chosen. Russia, 
not yet recovered from her defeat at the hands 
of Japan three years before, had to accept 
humiliation. Britain, though she protested vigor- 
ously, made it clear that she would not go to 
war over a Balkan question. And Germany, with 
the chivalrous gesture of a knight of romance, 
declared that she " stood beside her ally in shining 
armour,'' to make sure that she reaped the full 
profit from her dishonour. The bluff paid; and 
it was no doubt the memory of its success which 
encouraged Austria to take an equally high-handed 
line of action in 19 14. Perhaps the Bosnian an- 
nexation weakened the relations with Turkey for 
the moment, but it was only for the moment. 
And on the other hand it represented a great 
advance in the direct power of the Germanic 



150 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

powers in the Balkans, a serious threat to Serbia, 
and a marked defeat for Russia. Well might 
Prince Biilow claim that it represented the supreme 
triumph of German policy up to date. This *' su- 
preme triumph of German policy " was the success- 
ful repudiation of a treaty obligation. 

The seizure of Tripoli, however, was a very 
different matter. It was certainly not encouraged 
by Germany and Austria, who, indeed, had never 
made Italy a party to their Balkan schemes, and it 
went very near to ruining their policy. For the 
Turk might well feel aggrieved that a member of 
the Triple Alliance should have thus attacked him, 
and hesitate in his belief in its friendship. Bern- 
hardi thinks that Turkey should have been made 
a full member of the Triple Alliance in order to 
prevent such unfortunate episodes. Moreover the 
episode very much weakened the Triple Alliance 
itself. Italy had already shown signs of a readi- 
ness to withdraw from this combination during 
the Morocco crisis of 1905. After the Tripolitan 
war the bonds that still held her were extremely 
slight, and Bernhardi, writing in 1911, considers 
that she must no longer be regarded as an effective 
member of the group. 

Still more serious for German projects was the 
situation created by the alliance of the three Bal- 
kan states, Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria, and by 
their complete and unexpected success over the 
carefully-trained Turkish army, on which Ger- 
many had placed so much reliance. This com- 
bination, which to the rest of Europe seemed a 



RECENT GERMAN POLICY 151 

noble and promising event, was a real defeat for 
German policy; and the worst feature of it, from 
the German point of view (next to the collapse of 
the Turks), was the strengthening of Serbia which 
inevitably resulted from it. German and Austrian 
diplomacy at once set to work to diminish the evil 
as much as possible. In the Conference of 
London, where the terms of peace were settled, 
they used all their power to prevent Serbia from 
obtaining a foothold on the Adriatic, since that 
would reduce her economic dependence on 
Austria. As Serbia could not reap the natural 
result of her efforts by bringing other Serbs 
under her rule, since these were now all sub- 
jects of Austria, she had to be compensated else- 
where. She was compensated at the expense of 
Bulgaria. 

This had the happy effect from the German 
point of view, the tragic effect from the point of 
view of European peace, of introducing a cleavage 
into the Balkan League, and bringing on the 
miserable second Balkan War, which gave the 
Turk the chance of regaining Adrianople, and 
undid much of the benefit which the League had 
brought about. But Germany had the advantage 
of having once more troubled the waters in which 
she loved to fish. She had succeeded in breaking 
up a combination which might have been danger- 
ous when the Great Day came; and the situation 
in the Balkans was left in a sufficiently confused 
state to cause her no alarm. 

Of course these events only increased the hatred 



152 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

of the Serbs for their Austrian neighbours. But 
that must in any case be counted upon; an oppor- 
tunity for dealing with Serbia would be sure to 
come. It came with the murder of the Archduke 
in June, 1914, and the chance of reducing this 
vexatious little state once and for all was too good 
to be lost. If it could be done without a European 
war so much the better; and no doubt Austria 
was encouraged to violent action by the assurance 
that a bold bluff would succeed now, as it had 
succeeded in 1908. If, on the other hand, a 
European war resulted, Germany was ready: her 
preparations during the three previous years had 
been carried out on so vast a scale and with such 
minuteness of prevision that, as we have already 
seen, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that war 
would have been precipitated on some other ex- 
cuse, even if the Archduke had not been shot. 
Indeed, so appositely did the murder happen that 
some have thought it was arranged, the Archduke 
having many enemies in Austria. This suspicion 
is too horrible to be accepted without overwhelm- 
ing evidence, but there are facts which give colour 
to it. The Archduke was left unguarded. Several 
of the conspirators were Austrian subjects. The 
Austrian government had been warned against one 
of them by the Serbian government. And the 
actual murderer, Princip, has not been sentenced 
to death, but only to imprisonment. 

Such is the nature of the policy which Germany 
has been following in the Balkans during the last 
twenty years. We have dealt with it at length, 



RECENT GERMAN POLICY IS3 

not only because it supplies a remarkable illus- 
tration of German methods, for which the in- 
terests of peace and order in the most troubled 
part of Europe, and the abuses of power by the 
Unspeakable Turk, are only pawns to be used in 
the pursuit of world-empire; not only because 
it exhibits Germany as a constant source of unrest, 
a power with which reasonable relations are all 
but impossible, a power which simply declines to 
play a straightforward part in the Concert of 
Europe; but also because these events have directly 
led up to the war. 

If German policy had aimed only at what is 
called the " peaceful penetration " and the com- 
mercial development of Asia Minor and Mesopo- 
tamia none but extreme Chauvinists could have 
taken any objection; and there would have been 
no combination of the other powers to resist her, 
since all the other powers are pursuing similar 
objects. Indeed, in these respects Germany has 
fully achieved her ends, as we have already shown. 
What made her Balkan policy alarming, and led 
the other powers to unite to resist it, was its mani- 
fest and openly declared political object. 

Germany, for her own purposes, strove to 
prevent the settlement of the Balkan question: 
she strove to rehabilitate the noxious power of 
the Turk, to crush one of the small Christian 
states, and to reduce the others to vassalage. 
And her aim in doing so was to strengthen her 
resources for a coming world-war. The reor- 
ganisation of the Turkish army was a part of the 



154 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

same preparations as the huge expenditure on 
army and navy at home. The protectorate over 
all Mohammedans, which she claimed to assume 
as the ally of Turkey, was openly aimed at the 
three great Mohammedan powers, Britain, France 
and Russia. There was no mistaking these aims„ 
which were quite different in kind from mere 
commercial or colonial expansion. They were 
openly declared. They were part of her prepara- 
tion for the great bid for world-domination. And 
for that reason they inevitably led to a rapproche- 
ment among the threatened powers. 

During the whole of the nineteenth century 
Russia had been generally on friendly terms with 
Germany, and Bismarck to the end of his life did 
his best to maintain this friendship. From the 
moment when the new policy of William II 
became apparent Russia drew away from Ger- 
many; the secret Russo-German treaty was termi- 
nated in 1890, the year of Bismarck's fall; and 
the Franco-Russian offensive and defensive 
alliance was concluded in 1892, though it was 
not made public till later. Even Britain, always 
averse from diplomatic entanglements, was driven 
by the German attitude during the South African 
War, and by the successive German naval pro- 
grammes, to suspect the character and aims of the 
German policy, and to recognise that she would do 
well to get rid of causes of controversy with other 
states in view of the possibility of German attack. 
The settlement of all outstanding controversies 
with France which is known as the Entente 



RECENT GERMAN POLICY I5S 

Cordiale was completed in 1904, and was followed 
by a similar settlement with Russia in 1907. 

Thus was formed the Triple Entente, which has 
been loudly proclaimed in Germany as an attempt 
to isolate that state. But it was in no sense, and 
at no date, a formal alliance, until war broke out 
in 19 14. It meant at the most the formation of 
what Sir Edward Grey has called a " diplomatic 
group," whose aim was to watch the restless and 
disturbing activities of Germany. So far as 
Britain was concerned, its development coincided 
with an honest attempt to establish friendly rela- 
tions with Germany, and to remove outstanding 
causes of difference as had already been done with 
other countries. Britain did her best to assure 
Germany, as in the formal Cabinet message of 
19 1 2, that she had no hostile intentions. But the 
German government did nothing to meet these 
advances. It seemed to share the view of Bern- 
hardi that an understanding with Britain was not 
to be desired, and that British attempts at 
rapprochement should at most be used to post- 
pone war till the most favourable moment. 

It was the Morocco question which, even more 
than the Balkan question, brought home to 
British statesmen the real character of German 
policy, and forced them unwillingly to recognise 
that Germany meant in all probability to make 
war at her own time. 

The origin of the Morocco question is simple 
enough. The colonising activity of France in 
Northern Africa, which had been recognised and 



156 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

encouraged by Bismarck himself, had brought 
under her control all the lands surrounding the 
disorderly kingdom of Morocco, which commands 
the entrance to the Mediterranean. The anarchy 
reigning in this region being a source of unrest 
to all the surrounding territory, and a danger to 
European traders at Tangier and other ports, 
France, to whom the task naturally fell, proposed 
to the powers that she should, without annexing 
any territory, or interfering with the trading 
rights of other states, undertake the restoration 
of order by sending in troops to help the Sultan, 
who in 1 90 1 had asked for her aid. Italy, Spain, 
Russia all assented; and part of the agreement 
made with Britain in 1904 was that France should 
have a free hand in this country, subject to the 
maintenance of the open door for trade. 

Germany made no objection when the policy 
was announced, nor did she suggest any alternative 
means for restoring order. But as soon as the 
work was undertaken, the Kaiser made one of his 
dramatic interpositions. Landing at Tangier, he 
declared that he would maintain the integrity of 
Morocco (which was not threatened) and renewed 
his promise to protect all the Mohammedans of the 
world. The German government followed up this 
action by practically threatening war against 
France, and insisting upon the resignation of M. 
Delcasse, the minister who was responsible for the 
Morocco policy, as the price of peace. 

The Algeciras conference of the powers (1905) 
followed. This laid down a number of rules for 



RECENT GERMAN POLICY IS7 

the settlement of the country, and recognised the 
special position of France. But wild tribesmen 
do not pay much attention to the regulations of 
the European powers. The disorder continued to 
grow worse. The lives of Europeans were not 
safe, and it was only by the military intervention 
of France that the European residents were saved 
from destruction. French military intervention, 
once begun, inevitably extended; and Germany 
began to fear that she would lose the chance, 
which she hoped she had gained at Algeciras, of 
turning Morocco, or some part of it, into a German 
sphere. Hence^ — with a characteristically German 
diplomatic move — the gunboat Panther was sent 
to the port of Agadir in 191 1, to assert German 
claims with the mailed fist, though no step had 
been taken by France which was inconsistent with 
the Algeciras decisions. 

For a month Europe was on the verge of war. 
Britain, having definitely agreed that France 
should be responsible for the policing of Morocco, 
made it clear that she would support her. In the 
event Germany climbed down, securing a part of 
the French Congo as a " compensation " for fore- 
going her non-existent claims on Morocco, and 
peace was secured. But the German intervention 
had been so high-handed and so unreasonable that 
the other powers were forced to conclude that she 
was only looking for an excuse to attack France, 
and would have done so but for the action of 
Britain. It is said that she did not do so only 
because Admiral von Tirpitz assured his master 



158 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

that the navy was not ready for the British war, 
the enlargement of the Kiel Canal not being com- 
pleted. It has been said also that the episode was 
meant chiefly as a test of the strength of the 
Triple Entente.^ But whatever its motives, this 
episode forced the powers to anticipate the pos- 
sibility of a future attack, when the Kiel Canal 
should be ready. Without committing Britain to 
any decision as to her future action, Sir Edward 
Grey agreed that the naval and military experts 
of England and France might advisably take 
counsel as to the way in which they should co- 
operate in the unhappy event of a war being forced 
upon them by Germany. Thus the powers which 
were to be the victims of the German attack were 
not taken wholly by surprise when the moment 
came in 19 14. 

The whole policy of Germany during the last 
five and twenty years is of one piece. Its 
enormous and constantly increasing military and 
naval preparations; its far-reaching schemes of 
aggression in the Balkans; its attempts to stir 
up discontent in South Africa, and to assert a 
general protectorate over the Mohammedan sub- 
jects of the three powers with which it is now at 
war; its blusterous and bullying methods of 
diplomacy; its refusal to play a fair and honest 
part in the discussions of the nations; its eager- 
ness to sow discord among the small and sorely 

* Mr. Punch has expressed this view in a cartoon which 
shows a Prussian officer agonisingly embracing his toe after 
kicking a big stone marked Triple Entente, and exclaiming: 
"It's a rock, and I thought it only a scrap of paper." 



RECENT GERMAN POLICY iS9 

tried nations of the south-east; its readiness to 
disregard agreements, such as that of Algeciras, 
into which it had entered: — all this points to the 
same conclusion which is enforced by nearly all 
the political literature of these years, that the 
policy of the last quarter of a century has been 
one long and not over-skilful preparation for the 
great bid for world power which was made in 19 14 
on so slight a pretext. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE ALTERNATIVE TO THE DOCTRINE OF POWER 

TOURING the nineteenth century two conflict- 
-■-^ ing views in regard to international relations, 
neither of them wholly new, have been developed 
with a clearness never before known, and applied 
with a measure of success equally unprecedented. 
The one is the doctrine of Prussia which, with its 
applications in practice, we have been examining: 
the doctrine that brute force is ultimately the sole 
mode of determining controversies between na- 
tions, and the sole test of the relative value of 
civilisations; that the clash of brute force in war 
is a good and desirable thing in itself; and that 
treaty obligations between nations neither can nor 
ought to outweigh the right of a nation to seek 
the extension of its power by brute force. This 
doctrine has, as practised by Prussia, achieved so 
great a measure of success that it has captured 
the mind of the German nation, and induced it, 
trusting in brute force alone, to attempt the su- 
premacy of the world. It is no new doctrine, for 
it has been practised by many conquerors from 
Attila downwards; it is the primaeval doctrine of 
the jungle. But it has never before been ex- 
pounded as a gospel, and has seldom before been 
so boldly put into operation. 



ALTERNATIVE TO DOCTRINE OF POWER i6i 

But over against it, and not deterred by its 
successes, there has been rising during the nine- 
teenth century a rival doctrine, not quite so an- 
cient, since it is only as old as civilisation; and 
this doctrine also has never before been so fully 
expounded, and has never before achieved so 
great a measure of success. It is the doctrine 
that war is in itself a bad thing, which though it 
calls forth many great qualities, also destroys 
many fine and noble things; that it ought to be 
avoided as far as possible; that though it may be 
Utopian to hope to banish it wholly from the 
world, societies of rational men ought to be able 
to make it more and more rare, until the time 
comes when it will have vanished altogether; 
and that in spite of the fact that it is difficult 
to enforce obedience upon nations in the way 
in which the courts enforce obedience upon 
individuals, nevertheless the observance of treaties 
and other contracts is as real an obligation for 
nations as for men, and the enlightenment of a 
nation as of an individual may be measured by 
the value which it attached to its plighted word. 
This doctrine, which the adherents of its rival 
stigmatise as sentimentalism or hypocrisy, has 
made far more progress than most people realise. 
It is the doctrine of practically the whole civilised 
world outside of Germany; and, considerable as 
its successes have already been, they would have 
been far greater but that one power, and that 
power Germany, has consistently ridiculed, re- 
sisted and impeded it. 



i62 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

We do not here propose to say anything about 
the development of the principles of international 
law, to which many of the noblest minds of 
modern Europe, including many Germans, have 
devoted themselves; still less shall we expatiate 
upon the many fine aspirations after the reign of 
peace which are to be found in the literature and 
philosophy of all countries and ages, and which 
show that the best men at all times have 
repudiated the Prussian creed as an insult to 
humanity. We shall confine ourselves to a bald 
outline of the definite and practical steps which 
have been successfully taken towards the end of 
substituting, among civilised societies, some more 
reasonable practice than that of the tiger and the 
shark for settling international controversies. 
These steps will fall under five categories : the idea 
of the Concert of Powers striving for the main- 
tenance of peace by means of reasonable com- 
promise; the establishment of a group of small 
states under the general protection of Europe; the 
growth of international arbitration; the attempt to 
secure a restriction of armaments among the leading 
states; and the development of a code for reducing 
the evil effects of war to a minimum when it cannot 
be avoided. In all these respects real progress has 
been made. In all much greater progress would 
have been made but for the infatuation of Ger- 
many with its doctrine of Power. 



ALTERNATIVE TO DOCTRINE OF POWER 163 

i. — The Concert of Europe. 

Congresses of representatives of the principal 
European states have taken place with great 
frequency since the end of the fifteenth century, 
when that international rivalry which has been the 
main political feature of modern European history 
took its rise; and time and again, as in 1648 or 
17 1 3, these congresses have hoped that they had 
arrived at a settlement of European affairs which 
would be permanent, and might be regarded as 
part of " the public law of Europe/' But until 
the nineteenth century these congresses have al- 
most always been concerned with the settlement 
rendered necessary by the conclusion of some great 
war. It was not until the beginning of the nine- 
teenth century that the idea of the Concert of 
Europe as a semi-permanent institution, existing 
for the purpose not merely of deciding the issues 
of war, but of preventing its occurrence, became a 
practicable idea. 

When Napoleon had been defeated in 18 14, the 
whole world was so weary of war after two and 
twenty years of it, and so convinced of the futility 
and impermanence of most of its decisions, that 
there was a universal hope that the governments 
of the great states would take steps to guard 
against unnecessary future outbreaks of it. So the 
Congress of Vienna, which re-drew the map of 
Europe, was followed by the establishment of a 
sort of permanent league of the great powers to 



i64 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

maintain the system thus established, and it was 
agreed that their representatives should meet from 
time to time, in order to prevent outbreaks by a 
reasonable discussion of the issues among them- 
selves. 

The drawback of this arrangement was that it 
included only the five great powers (England, 
France, Austria, Russia and Prussia), and at first 
(1814-18) only the four of them which had com- 
bined to overthrow Napoleon: the lesser powers 
were all excluded from these deliberations. Never- 
theless the institution of this Concert of Europe 
was, or might have been, a very real advance upon 
anything that Europe had known before; and it 
was regarded with a genuine hope and enthusiasm 
by sane and practical men, and not merely by 
dreamers. 

One of the great princes of Europe, the Tsar 
Alexander I of Russia, looked forward to the 
new era with such sincere emotion that he invited 
all his brother princes to sign a strange document 
whereby they proclaimed that alike in the govern- 
ment of their own dominions and in their rela- 
tions with other states, their conduct would hence- 
forth be regulated by the sacred principles of the 
Christian religion. This was the so-called Holy 
Alliance, and though it came to have a very un- 
savoury reputation, the sincerity of the hopes by 
which it was inspired, at least in the mind of its 
author, cannot be denied. At their first general 
congress, in 18 18, the five powers in a formal 
declaration expressed the hope that they were now 



ALTERNATIVE TO DOCTRINE OF POWER 165 

entering upon *^ a permanent state of peace/' and 
asserted their " unchangeable resolution never to 
depart, either amongst themselves or in their rela- 
tions with other states, from the strictest observ- 
ance of the principles of the law of nations," by 
which they meant the general doctrines of inter- 
national law as they had been developed by a 
series of great scholars from Grotius onwards. 
And in making this declaration they plainly as- 
serted their conviction that a sort of European 
federation for the permanent maintenance of peace 
was a possible and practicable device. 

Unhappily the time was not yet ripe for the 
realisation of these noble aspirations, and the 
Concert of Europe in this, its first, stage was not 
only a failure but turned out to be a danger to 
European freedom. It held a series of congresses 
for the solution of successive difficulties as they 
arose; and it probably helped to avoid war for 
several years. But its members were mostly 
absolute sovereigns and their ministers, not the 
representatives of free peoples. They were so 
obsessed with the dread of revolution, and so much 
afraid of their own subjects, that they increasingly 
tended to use the Concert as a means of stamping 
out all movements inspired by the " revolution- 
ary " ideas of nationalism and liberalism, and 
showed a growing and dangerous readiness to in- 
terfere in the domestic affairs of individual states, 
and to dictate forms of government, instead of 
confining themselves to the settlement of inter- 
national controversies. For that reason Britain 



i66 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

and France, the two powers in the group which 
possessed and believed in representative institu- 
tions, gradually became colder in their attitude to 
the Concert, and after a few years Britain definitely 
withdrew from it and defied it on the express 
ground that it was being used for oppressive 
purposes, and was unduly interfering in the in- 
ternal affairs of individual states. 

In fact, the Concert was premature at the be- 
ginning of the nineteenth century, partly because 
it did not represent the wishes of peoples but 
only those of kings, and still more because the 
state-system of Europe had not yet been accom- 
modated to the natural divisions of nations : the 
claims of Italy or of Germany to be free and united 
were claims of a character far too fundamental to 
be readily settled by any such body. A Concert 
of Europe can only become a fully effective organ 
when the lines of division between states, and the 
modes of organisation within the states, are such 
as in the main to reflect the real wishes and feel- 
ings of the peoples concerned. 

Nevertheless the purposes which the Concert 
could serve were so obvious and useful that in 
spite of its first failure it was bound to be revived. 
The representatives of the great powers, and on 
several occasions (as after the Crimean War) 
some of those of the lesser powers also, continued 
to meet from time to time, and often succeeded in 
finding solutions to questions that might easily 
have led to general war. Thus in 1839 the vexed 
questions raised by the Belgian Revolution of 1830 



ALTERNATIVE TO DOCTRINE OF POWER 167 

were peaceably settled by an agreed delimitation 
of the frontiers of Belgium, and a general guaran- 
tee, signed by all the great powers, that Belgium 
should be a neutral country. This solution lasted 
for seventy-five years, and was only broken by 
Germany. Thus, again, in 1852 the very compli- 
cated question of Schleswig-Holstein was settled, 
and though the settlement was short-lived, it was 
Prussia which broke it. 

After 1 87 1, when the great nations of Western 
Europe had reached their natural limits, the idea 
of Concert again became more living. It was able 
to give at least a temporary settlement to the 
Balkan question in 1878; more remarkable, it 
could in 1884 agree upon the partition of Africa 
among the colonising powers. During the last gen- 
eration the Concert has been time and again the 
safeguard of peace. It is worth noting that Eng- 
land has been its most earnest advocate, and Ger- 
many its most frequent troubler. If Sir Edward 
Grey has in recent years earned the title of the 
peacemaker of Europe, it has been by the use of 
the Concert. By this means general European 
war was avoided in 1905 on the Morocco question, 
in 1908 on the Bosnian question, in 19 11 on the 
Morocco question again, in 19 12 on the Balkan 
question. And, if Germany would have permitted 
it, the Concert of Europe would once more have 
saved the peace of Europe in the summer of 1914 : 
it had almost done so, in face of unprecedented 
difficulties, when Germany burst in with her ulti- 
matum to Russia. 



i68 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

Throughout these last troublous years, indeed, 
Germany has been constantly the disturbing 
factor. Not only has her action produced all the 
difficulties with which the Concert has had to 
deal, but her methods of discussion have been 
such as to make fair discussion and compromise 
all but impossible. A machine like the Concert 
of Powers can only work efficiently if the states- 
men who take part in it are honestly desirous 
of peace, sincerely anxious to understand each 
other's point of view, and ready to compromise. 
But Germany has during these years never 
frankly reconciled herself to this part. She has 
come to the council-table of the nations clad in 
" shining armour," hammering the table with her 
" mailed fist," and shouting that she must have 
" her place in the sun," and that " her will must 
be respected." Under such circumstances the deli- 
cate business of diplomatic adjustment becomes 
extraordinarily difficult. 

The Concert of Europe has done useful work; 
but it will be able to play the part of guarantor of 
peace only when its members respect one another's 
claims, recognise that its aim is to avoid war by 
reasonable discussion, and abstain from the con- 
stant threat of using force. And this will not 
happen till the adherents of the doctrine of brute 
force have been compelled to reconsider their 
point of view, and have accepted the fundamental 
position that war is a bad thing, not a good thing, 
and that the object of wise statesmanship is to 
avoid war, not to seek favourable opportunities 



ALTERNATIVE TO DOCTRINE OF POWER 169 

for waging it. In the meanwhile the Concert of 
Europe is dead, and it has been killed by Ger- 
many, its persistent foe. It will revive and grow 
in effectiveness; but not until Germany has aban- 
doned the doctrine of force, and not until the 
comity of European nations has been reorganised 
upon the basis of mutual respect for one another's 
rights. 

ii. — The Security of Small States. 

On the surface the nineteenth century has 
witnessed a considerable diminution in the 
number of small independent states within the 
European comity. The thirty-nine states of 
Germany in 181 5 have given place to the single 
German empire; the eight small states into which 
Italy was divided in 181 5 have been merged in 
the single kingdom of Italy. But this does not 
mean (as Treitschke and his disciples always 
assume) that the trend of events has been hostile 
to the existence of small states as such. In both 
of these cases the distinctions between the states 
were arbitrary and undesired by their inhabitants; 
in both cases their union in larger wholes has been 
welcomed by the citizens of these states, because 
it was the larger and not the smaller unit which 
represented the national principle. 

There has been no case, during the nineteenth 
century, in which a small state has been subju- 
gated by a large state of a different nationality. 
On the contrary, there have been several cases in 



170 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

which new small states have succeeded in estab- 
lishing and maintaining their independence just 
because they represented the national principle. 
Greece threw off the yoke of Turkey; Belgium 
separated herself from Holland; Serbia, Rumania 
and Bulgaria secured their independence; Norway 
broke away from Sweden. And in all these cases 
independence, once established, has never been 
impaired, and where the boundaries of these small 
states have been changed, it has always been by 
an enlargement which made the limits of the state 
correspond more nearly with the limits of 
nationality. 

And not only these new states, created by the 
nineteenth century, but the older small states, 
have remained during the century in secure pos- 
session of their independence. Switzerland, Hol- 
land, Portugal and Denmark have retained their 
national limits unimpaired. It is true that Den- 
mark had to submit to a Prussian attack in 1864, 
which cut away from her the provinces of 
Schleswig and Holstein, long associated with the 
Danish monarchy. But neither of these provinces 
had ever been incorporated in Denmark proper, 
and one of them, Holstein, had always been 
technically part of Germany. Denmark was 
very hardly used by Prussia in 1864, but her 
national independence was not threatened, and 
the actual limits of the kingdom were not cut 
down. 

It is true therefore to say that small states, 
where their limits coincided with real national dis- 



ALTERNATIVE TO DOCTRINE OF POWER i^i 

tinctions, have been generally secure during the 
nineteenth century. They have had reason to feel 
that their independence was protected not merely 
by the jealousies of the greater powers (though 
that perhaps has formed their chief safeguard), 
but also by the conscience of Europe. There has 
been, during the nineteenth century, no instance 
of an attack by a great power upon a small state, 
with the exceptions of Prussia's attacks upon 
Denmark in 1864 and Belgium in 19 14 and Aus- 
tria's repeated attacks upon Serbia; there has been 
no single instance of an attempt by a great power 
to subjugate and annex a small national state until 
the annexation of Belgium by Germany and the 
Austrian onslaught on Serbia. 

Even if it be true that the main source of the 
safety of the small states has been the mutual 
jealousy of their greater neighbours, there has 
nevertheless arisen a real feeling that the little 
states form a valuable element in the European 
system, and have a claim to the protection of 
Europe as a whole, so that the public conscience 
in all countries would be shocked by a violation 
of their independence. There are only three cases 
in which the independence and neutrality of small 
states have been guaranteed by the powers as a 
whole: the cases of Switzerland (1815), Belgium 
(1839) ^^^ Luxemburg (1867); but the other 
small states, almost equally with these, have been 
felt to be under the guardianship of Europe. They 
have been, as it were, pledges of European honour, 
and evidences that the doctrine of the jungle in all 



172 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

its brutality was not accepted by the most civilised 
communities of the world. 

And as they have been the evidences of the 
existence of international honour and fairness, 
these little states have naturally been the chief 
fields of the development of more advanced con- 
ceptions of international law. Switzerland pre- 
sided over the birth of the international Red Cross 
system, and the international law of literary 
copyright. Holland (to which Europe owes the 
birth of International Law) has become the 
centre of the system of international arbitra- 
tion. 

Moreover Europe has come to recognise that 
these small states, quite apart from the fact that 
their existence gives a just expression tO' national 
feeling, have been of real value because they have 
been the field of highly instructive experiments in 
the art of government and in the solution of the 
economic difficulties created by the industrial revo- 
lution. In some degree they have been the political 
laboratories of Europe. They have made also dis- 
tinctive contributions to the thought and art of 
Europe. In short, their existence has added to 
the variety of national type and temperament 
which form the main secret of the vitality and 
progressive character of European civilisation. 
Europe as a whole has learnt to value the small 
nations. And the security which they have en- 
joyed for a hundred years amid great neighbours 
armed to the teeth has been a proof of the de- 
velopment of a sort of European citizenship, and 



ALTERNATIVE TO DOCTRINE OF POWER 173 

a great step towards the better organisation of 
international relationships. 

Let it be repeated: no great European state 
has during the last hundred years attempted to 
subjugate one of the smaller members of the 
European family until Austria made her bullying 
onslaught on Serbia, and Germany her entirely 
unprovoked attack upon Belgium. If the protec- 
tion of small states is to continue to be one of the 
principles of European politics, these attacks must 
be resisted and punished. Otherwise the doctrine 
of Power, which is held by Germany, and which 
asserts that great powers not only have a right 
to subjugate small states, but ought to do so, will 
triumph; and the conception of Europe as a family 
of states, in which the weaker members may 
count upon the protection of the strong, will per- 
ish. The establishment of that conception, now 
imperilled, has been one of the most interesting 
achievements of the nineteenth century. 

iii. — The Progress of International Arbitration. 

Until the eve of the nineteenth century no two 
nations in modern times ever thought of submit- 
ting a subject of controversy between them to 
impartial arbitration. During this century arbi- 
tration between nations has become a common 
practice. It has grown up quietly, and few have 
realised how substantial and how steady the prog- 
ress of the idea has been. Many still think of 
international arbitration as a Utopian idea; yet 



174 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

it has already become so much a part of the 
ordinary practice of most of the civilised states, 
other than Germany, that it is justifiable to look 
forward to a rapid enlargement of its sphere. 
And it is certain that it would have attained an 
even greater measure of success, if there had not 
existed in the heart of Europe a state which re- 
garded war as a good thing, and the extension of 
its power by the use or the threat of brute force 
as the sum of statesmanship. 

The first stage in the development of arbitra- 
tion is reached when two states agree to submit 
a particular question to the decision either of a 
third state or to a joint commission of their own 
subjects. The first modern agreement of this sort 
was made in 1794, when England and America 
referred the determination of the boundary of 
Canada to a joint commission. These two states 
have ever since taken the lead in the use and 
development of arbitration. The most remark- 
able arbitration cases, those in which there was 
real risk of wounding the amour pro pre of the 
two parties, have been cases in which England 
and America have been involved: the notorious 
^Alabama case, and the Venezuela question. It 
may be said that the relations between these two 
states is of so peculiar a kind as to make such 
solutions easier for them than for other states, 
and no doubt that is so. But both states have 
shown a real willingness to extend the method 
to other states, and the progress of the idea has 
been mainly due to them. How steady this 



ALTERNATIVE TO DOCTRINE OF POWER 175 

progress has been may be indicated by a few 
figures. Between 1820 and 1840 eight inter- 
national disputes were settled by arbitration; be- 
tween 1840 and i860 thirty; between i860 and 
1880 forty- four; between 1880 and 1900 no less 
than ninety. 

Thus when the permanent court of inter- 
national arbitration was set up at the Hague in 
1899, its institution was no empty bit of idealism; 
it was already clear that there would be plenty 
of work for the court to do. No doubt the 
majority of the questions decided in these cases 
were trifling matters, which would not in any case 
have led to war. But that was certainly not the 
case with all of them. And at least the nations 
were acquiring the habit of resorting to peace- 
ful rather than violent means of settling their 
differences. 

In the arbitration cases of the nineteenth 
century Britain leads; America makes a good 
second; France comes third. Germany is no- 
where in the list: the only arbitration case 
known to the writer to which she was a party 
was one in which, on the proposal of Britain, a 
question affecting the ownership of some guano 
deposits on the coast of South- West Africa was 
settled in this way. Germany does not believe in 
arbitration, but in the mailed fist. 

A far greater step is taken when two nations 
agree to submit to arbitration not only a par- 
ticular existing controversy, but all future con- 
troversies not of the gravest character. The first 



176 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

nations to make such an agreement were Britain 
and France in 1904. These two nations had 
just succeeded in disposing of the many little out- 
standing differences which, by causing a constant 
sense of friction, had for long made cordial re- 
lations difficult between them. They completed 
their agreement by undertaking not to let such 
petty irritations remain unsettled in future, but 
to refer them to the Hague tribunal and stand by 
its decision. 

Questions vital to national interests or honour 
were indeed reserved; and it may be said that this 
made the treaty of no avail, since either nation 
might insist upon regarding any question of im- 
portance as vital to its interests or honour, and 
thus leave for settlement by arbitration only the 
minor questions which would in any case be too 
insignificant to lead to war. But that is a super- 
ficial view. The way in which this clause would 
be interpreted must depend upon the spirit in 
which the states concerned entered into the under- 
taking, and upon the degree of friendliness which 
they felt for one another at the moment when 
vexed questions arose. If they sincerely and 
honestly desired to maintain peace, and if they 
entertained friendly feelings towards one another 
when difficulties arose, they might be expected not 
to raise unnecessary difficulties. That Britain and 
France desired peace was shown by their enter- 
ing into such an agreement at all. And as for 
their attitude towards one another, what creates 
a spirit of unfriendliness between nations is the 



ALTERNATIVE TO DOCTRINE OF POWER 177 

existence of many petty causes of friction, each 
insignificant in itself, but all combining to produce 
a smouldering irritation, ready to burst into flame 
upon the emergence of a difference of greater im- 
portance. The agreement to refer all such petty 
causes of friction, as they arose, to arbitration 
was the best possible way to maintain an atmos- 
phere of good feeling, favourable to the settlement 
of more serious issues when they arise. For that 
reason, the exclusion of matters vitally affecting 
national interests or honour from arbitration is 
far less important than it seems at first sight, and 
the treaty of 1904 marks the beginning of a new 
era in the relations of peoples. 

How ready the civilised world was to welcome 
this new advance was shown by the extraordinary 
series of arbitration treaties which followed it and 
were modelled upon it. The most remarkable, be- 
cause the strongest and most unqualified, of the 
series was the treaty between Britain and 
America concluded in 1908. But nearly all the 
nations of the civilised world hastened to adopt 
the new system. Between 1904 and 19 10 over 
one hundred arbitration treaties were concluded 
between various nations. All the civilised nations 
of the world were represented, with one exception. 
The exception was Germany. Germany regarded 
the whole of this movement as mere mawkish 
sentimentalism, or worse. " Pacific motives," 
says General Bernhardi, " are seldom the real 
motives " of the nations which make treaties of 
this kind. " They usually employ the need of 



178 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

peace as a cloak under which to promote their 
own political aims." In his view therefore the 
whole of the arbitration movement is simply the 
product of nauseous hypocrisy; and if it is any- 
where sincere it is due to " a decay of spirit and 
courage " which " has rendered most civilised 
nations anaemic." 

Regular arbitrations, in which both sides agree 
beforehand to accept the decision of an impartial 
umpire, have not been the only evidences of the 
desire of the civilised world to avoid war so far 
as possible. There have also been during the nine- 
teenth century numerous instances of " media- 
tion," when one state, without attempting to play 
the part of arbitrator, acts as go-between in the 
negotiations of two other states whose relations 
are strained. This kind of intervention, either to 
prevent war or to bring it to a close, has been 
far more freely used, and far more readily wel- 
comed, during the nineteenth century than ever 
before. It availed to prevent war on at least five 
occasions during the century, and on at least one 
occasion it succeeded in preserving peace when 
the powers concerned had refused to go to arbi- 
tration. Europe at large has regarded this de- 
velopment as a good thing, because Europe at 
large has learnt to consider war as an evil. In 
1856 the powers assembled in Congress at Paris 
went so far as to draw up a formal protocol, ex- 
pressing the common sentiment of Europe, to the 
effect that " states between which any misunder- 
standing might arise should, before appealing to 



ALTERNATIVE TO DOCTRINE OF POWER 179 

arms, have recourse so far as circumstances might 
allow to the good offices of a friendly power." 
This protocol was put forward by the British 
representative, Lord Clarendon. It received the 
cordial assent of France, Austria, Russia, Sardinia 
and Turkey. The only power which refused to 
accept it was Prussia, which on this occasion, as 
so often again, stood forth as the one civilised 
state unwilling to forward the cause of peace 
upon earth. 

iv. — Projects of Disarmament. 

All the civilised nations of the world, except 
Germany, have long regarded with dismay and 
exasperation the steadily increasing burden of un- 
productive expenditure on armaments, and have 
realised that the mad competition of the nations 
in this regard must in the long run lead to almost 
universal bankruptcy, while it brings no imag- 
inable benefit to anybody but the armament firms, 
and leaves the rivals, after they have wasted their 
substance, in the same relative position as at the 
beginning. Germany alone holds that it is a fine 
and worthy thing that the whole resources of a 
nation should be concentrated upon military 
preparations, for this is part of the doctrine of 
Power. She has been the cause of the fantastic 
increase of military expenditure which has marked 
the last five-and-twenty years. And the derision 
with which she regards every proposal to diminish 
this expenditure by mutual agreement has pre- 



i8o BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

vented any effective step being taken. The nation 
which suggests that money might be more wisely 
spent stands self -condemned in the eyes of mod- 
ern Germany as decadent, anaemic, effeminate. 

In 1898 the Tsar of Russia, a power which is 
widely held to be even more dangerously militarist 
than Germany, sent an invitation to all the lead- 
ing civilised states tO' confer on this question, 
and to consider whether by frank discussion some 
scheme of general disarmament, or rather of 
general limitation of armaments, might not be 
attainable. The rescript in which this invitation 
was conveyed contained a weighty and statesman- 
like exposition of the evils which the civilised 
world was bringing upon itself by this reckless 
competition. This statement, coming from the 
autocrat of the great Eastern Empire which many 
sentimental pacifists regard with a sort of 
hypnotised dread, is so striking that it deserves 
quotation. 

" The financial charges consequent on increas- 
ing armaments strike at public prosperity in its 
very source. The intellectual and physical strength 
of the nations, labour and capital, are for the 
major part diverted from their natural application 
and unproductively expended. Hunidreds of 
millions are devoted to acquiring terrible engines 
of destruction which, though to-day regarded as 
the last word of science, are destined to-morrow 
to lose all value, in consequence of some fresh 
discovery in the same field. National culture, 
economic progress, and the production of wealth 



ALTERNATIVE TO DOCTRINE OF POWER i8i 

are either paralysed or checked in their develop- 
ment. Moreover, in proportion as the armaments 
of each power increase, so do they less and less 
fulfil their object. The economic crises due in 
great part to the system of excessive armaments, 
and the continual danger which lies in this mass- 
ing of war material, are transforming the armed 
peace of our days into a crushing burden which 
the peoples have more and more difficulty in bear- 
ing. It appears evident, then, that if this state 
of things were prolonged, it would lead inevitably 
to the very cataclysm which it is desired to avert, 
the very horrors of which make every thinking 
being shudder in advance." 

Many people thought, when the Tsar's invitation 
was issued, that it was a piece of unpractical 
Utopianism which could lead to no useful results; 
just as many people have thought that inter- 
national arbitration was a baseless dream. But 
this was not the view of responsible statesmen; 
and when the representatives of twenty-six powers 
met at the Hague in 1899 there was among them 
a very genuine hope that if all the great powers 
sincerely meant business, real and practical results 
might be attained. Unfortunately there was one 
power which regarded the whole movement with 
undisguised contempt, and which believed that in- 
crease of armaments was a sign of virility; one 
nation whose *' thinking beings " were far from 
'[ shuddering in advance " at the " horrors " of the 
cataclysm of universal war, but rather looked 
forward to them with glee. That power was 



i82 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

Germany; and the attitude of Germany made it 
impossible for the Conference to arrive at any 
definite results. It had to content itself with a 
vague expression of opinion, and a pious hope 
that individual powers would enter into negotia- 
tions with a view to proportionate reductions. 

One power at least has done its utmost in this 
respect. Britain is the only one of the great powers 
whose military preparations are obviously and un- 
mistakably designed solely for the purposes of 
defence. Her small army, organised primarily 
for imperial service, is quite incapable of attacking 
the colossal hosts of the European states, and, 
now that she finds herself plunged into a con- 
tinental war, she is compelled to improvise new 
armies after the declaration of war in order to 
take her fair share in the struggle. Her great 
navy is not too great to secure the safety of her 
own shores and to keep open trade routes on which 
her very existence depends. Yet Britain has done 
her best to act in the spirit of the Hague Con- 
ference. Between 1906 and 1908 she honestly 
tried to come to an agreement with the one power 
which seemed to threaten her — Germany. She 
proposed a mutual limitation of expenditure on 
naval construction; and as an evidence of good 
faith, without waiting for the conclusion of any 
agreement, she retarded her own naval construc- 
tion to such a degree during these two years that 
in the opinion of many she imperilled her own 
safety. The reply of Germany was to increase 
her own programme of naval construction. Even 



ALTERNATIVE TO DOCTRINE OF POWER 183 

this did not deter the British government. By 
one suggestion after another she has tried to bring 
Germany to a more reasonable attitude. The only 
result has been to convince Germany that Britain 
is a decadent and anaemic power, and to encourage 
her to proceed with her preparations for the Day. 

V. — The Creation of a Humane Code of War, 

If Europe has found it impossible to get rid of 
war altogether, it has at least during the nineteenth 
century succeeded in making great advances in the 
direction of reducing its evils to a minimum. 

Long before any serious attempt had been made 
to lay down clear definitions and to obtain their 
acceptance by governments, the nations had learnt, 
from a mere sense of decency, to exempt non-com- 
batants as far as possible from the hardships of 
war; and Vattel, the eighteenth century interna- 
tional jurist, could say that " this practice has 
grown into a custom with the nations of Europe. 
... The troops alone carry on war, while the rest 
of the nation remains at peace." 

Modern armies have in general prided themselves 
on doing as little damage as possible to the country 
through which they passed; and a hundred years 
ago Wellington noted with disgust that the Prus- 
sian armies, alone among the armies of Europe, left 
a trail of desolation wherever they passed. Prus- 
sia alone, indeed, among the nations has clung to 
the savage rules of the jungle in the conduct of 
war: it was the Prussian Bismarck who said that 



i84 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

it was the duty of a conqueror to leave the con- 
quered people nothing but their eyes to weep 
with; and a Prussian Emperor, William II, who 
in the twentieth century conjured his soldiers to 
create a memory of terror among the people they 
were sent to punish, and to emulate the reputation 
of Attila and his Huns. 

Yet the strength and sincerity of the civilised 
world's demand for humanity in war have been 
such that these outbursts have been taken as mere 
rhetoric. Until the outbreak of the war of 19 14 it 
was believed that even Germany had yielded to the 
prevailing current; for she has assented to and 
formally accepted the remarkable series of conven- 
tions in regard to the conduct of war which have 
during the last hundred years not only given con- 
crete and exact form to the " customs '' of which 
Vattel spoke, but have very largely extended 
them. 

There has been, during the last century, a long 
series of conventions and agreements among the 
powers regulating the conduct of war. At Paris, in 
1856, privateering was forbidden and a series of 
regulations for the protection of neutral commerce 
was adopted. At Geneva in 1864 a code was 
adopted for the protection of the wounded and 
those in attendance upon them. At St. Petersburg 
in 1868 the first steps were taken towards the pro- 
hibition of needlessly horrible weapons of war. 
But all this culminated in the remarkable work of 
the Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907, whereby 
a whole systematic code covering every aspect of 



ALTERNATIVE TO DOCTRINE OF POWER 185 

warfare was adopted by all the civilised states of 
the world. 

The regulations of this code have been honour- 
ably observed in every war which has been fought 
since it was adopted; even semi-barbarous states 
have prided themselves upon their observance. It 
was reserved for Germany to disregard every one 
of these regulations which seemed to stand in the 
way of her immediate convenience, and to return to 
the naked barbarism of waging a war of deliberate 
terrorism against non-combatants. How unflinch- 
ing this repudiation of conventions which Germany 
herself had accepted has been, we have already seen.^ 
That she has gone behind the " custom " which was 
honoured even in the eighteenth century, of leav- 
ing the rest of the nation at peace while the troops 
fight, one fact alone is enough to show : hundreds 
of thousands of Belgians prefer to live on charity 
in Holland and England rather than trust them- 
selves in the neighbourhood of the soldiers of cul- 
ture. There has been no parallel to the Belgian 
exodus in modem history, because there has been 
no parallel to the German method of conducting 
war. 

The Hague Conventions of 1907 were drawn up 
and accepted by the representatives of no less than 
thirty- three states. It is disheartening that not one 
of these states, not actually engaged in the war, has 
taken the slightest notice of the German infractions 
of the Conventions. If the neutral states, or one 
among them, such as America, had formally pro- 
^ Above, Chap. I., § iii. 



i86 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

tested after the first Belgian outrages, and de- 
manded the observance of the Conventions, it is 
more than probable that Germany would have given 
way: she would certainly have given way if the 
neutral powers had made it clear that they meant 
their protest to be taken seriously. It would ap- 
pear, therefore, that for the later miseries of Bel- 
gium the neutrals must in some degree share the 
responsibility with Germany. 



What has been written above is but a slight and 
cursory survey of a remarkable and many-sided 
development, but it ought to be enough to show 
that the civilised world as a whole has accepted 
ideals very different from those embodied in the 
German Doctrine of Power, and has already made 
genuine progress towards realising them. The 
Concert of the Powers, though it has not yet ful- 
filled the glowing hopes of its projectors of a hun- 
dred years ago, has become a real and operative 
fact, and has repeatedly availed to prevent war 
when it seemed almost inevitable. A group of little 
states have been enabled to live in perfect security, 
under the common protection of Europe, and the 
world has learnt to value them. The practice of 
settling international disputes by arbitration has 
quietly grown to great dimensions, and nearly all 
the nations are pledged to get rid of causes of 
friction between them, whenever possible, by a 
resort to this means; the world has welcomed the 



ALTERNATIVE TO DOCTRINE OF POWER 1875 

institution of a permanent court of international 
arbitration, drawing its sanction from the assent 
and support of all the great states ; and even where 
arbitration has been found impracticable, nations 
have learnt to welcome instead of resenting the 
mediation of disinterested states in their quarrels. 
All the great states but one have agreed that exag- 
gerated armaments are a danger to civilisation, and 
desire to see them diminish. Finally, the common 
sense of the civilised world is agreed that if war 
cannot be avoided, it ought to be waged in such a 
way as to inflict the minimum of suffering. These 
are remarkable advances, representing, when taken 
together, perhaps the greatest moral progress made 
by civilisation in the modern age ; for they bring in 
sight the time when the actions of nations, equally 
with those of individuals, will recognise the obliga- 
tion upon them of a moral law. 

The whole of this advance rests upon a series of 
treaties to which almost all the civilised communi- 
ties of the world have been parties. It has been 
made possible by a growing confidence, justified by 
the behaviour of nearly all states, that civilised 
communities will regard their treaty obligations as 
sacred. A belief in the sanctity of treaties is cer- 
tainly a part of the morality of the civilised world, 
and is the only possible basis of progress; it is so 
widespread that nations go on confidently making 
treaties with one another, and are willing to stake 
their dearest interests upon the inviolability of these 
scraps of paper. Indeed, it has been laid down by 
a congress of the nations (1871) that "no power 



i88 BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY 

can liberate itself from the engagements of a treaty, 
nor modify the stipulations thereof, unless with the 
consent of the contracting powers by means of an 
amicable arrangement '* ; ^ and it may be noted 
that Germany herself was a party to this declara- 
tion. 

Here, therefore, is a clear body of doctrine in 
regard to international relations, which may fairly 
be said to be accepted by the whole civilised world 
outside of Germany. 

The non-German world believes that justice be- 
tween nations ought to override the desire of any 
single nation to extend its own material dominion; 
Germany believes that the extension of a state's 
power is its highest moral duty, overriding all the 
claims of other states. 

The non-German world believes that in the ab- 
sence of a police- force able to compel nations to 
obey a common law, a group of great states not only 
should be, but is, able to maintain common rights by 
reasonable discussion and compromise; Germany 
believes that any such system is an effeminate and 
cowardly device. 

The non-German world desires to see small states 
upheld and protected; Germany believes that they 
ought to be devoured by their greater neighbours. 

The non-German world hates war, wishes to 
diminish it by all practicable means, and thinks 
that with the progress of civilisation it must as cer- 
tainly come to an end as the blood-feud between 
primitive clans ; Germany regards war as the high- 

* Treaty of London, 1871 (on the Black Sea). 



ALTERNATIVE TO DOCTRINE OF POWER 189 

est form of statesmanship, and all attempts to avoid 
it as due to cowardice or hypocrisy. 

The non-German world holds, and has held for 
centuries, that so long as war continues to exist, it 
should be waged by methods as little inhumane and 
barbarous as possible; Germany believes in the 
methods of terrorism, and considers the Huns as 
the best models to imitate. 

The non-German world regards treaties as 
sacred, and is convinced that respect for treaties is 
the very foundation of international morality, just 
as observance of contracts is the foundation of 
individual morality; Germany holds that there is 
no international morality, and that treaties are only 
valid so long as it is convenient to observe them. 

Here is a conflict of beliefs which is more funda- 
mental than any that has ever been brought to an 
issue in the history of the world. This conflict is 
the real issue of the war of 1914. The defence of 
the doctrine which we have described as being held 
by the non-German world is being left to a com- 
paratively small group of states. Other states, 
proud to claim a share in the advancement of these 
non-German ideas, are yet ready to forego any 
share in the honour of defending them. Yet for 
them, equally with the Allies, it is an issue of life 
and death; for it is a struggle between honour and 
dishonour, between freedom supported by law and 
the tyranny of brute force, between the morality of 
civilisation and the morality of the jungle. That 
is an issue to which no man, and no state, can be 
indifferent. 



X 



INDEX 



Abdul Hamid, his friendship 
with William II, 147; fall 
of, 148. 

Adrianople, regained by Turkey, 
151. 

Africa, German South-West, 123. 

Africa, partition of, settled by 
the Concert of Europe, 167. 

Agadir, crisis of, 132, 157. 

Alabama, case of the, 174. 

Alexander I, Tsar of Russia, 164. 

Alexander, King of Serbia, 141. 

Algeciras conference, the, 156, 
157, 159. 

Algeria, French occupation of, 
138. 

America, soldiers of, 39 ; people 
of, 46 ; Germany and, 57 ; in- 
ternational arbitration in, 
174, 175, 177; the IJague 
Conventions in, 185. 

Antwerp, 37. 

Arabia, railway in, 147. 

Arbitration, International, 173 — 
79, 186, 187, 188. 

Armenia, massacres in, 146. 

Asia Minor, Germany and, 139, 
140, 147, 153. 

Asquith, Mr. H. H., 24. 

Attila, empire of, 72, 160; Wil- 
liam II and, 137, 184. 

Austria and the Holy Roman 
Empire, 78 — 79 ; under Maria 
Theresa, 89 ; and the respon- 
sibility for the war, 2 ; and 
the murder of the Archduke, 
152 ; relations of, with Tur- 
key and the Balkan states, 
7, 138 — 52, also with Ser- 
bia, 5—9, 170, 173; with 
Russia, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 20, 
122, 136, 138, 147, 150 ; with 
Prussia, 46, 91, 100, 102, 104, 
107 ; with Germany, 96, 148 — 
53. 



Bach, 81. 

Bagdad, railway scheme, the, 147. 

Bavlkan peninsula, the Austria 
and, 7, 139, 140, 143; Ger- 
many and, 148, 153. 



Balkan question, the, and the 
European Concert, 167. 

Balkan wars, the, 18, 151. 

Bavaria, army of, 119 ; King of, 
and the Emperor of Germany, 
107. 

Beethoven, 45, 81. 

Belgium, Independence of, 170, 171, 
173 ; revolution in, and the 
European Concert, 166 — 67 ; 
German Liberals and the rev- 
olution, 96 — 97 ; relations of, 
with Germany, 18, 21, 23, 63 ; 
with France and England, 20, 
21, 108 ; neutrality of. 21, 23, 
24, 29—33; in 1870, 31; 
treaty of, 42, 60, 167; Bern- 
hardi discusses, 60 ; Germany 
and the violation of, 33 — 35, 
36 ; violations of Hague Con- 
ventions in, 37 — ^42 ; suffer- 
ings of, 34—35, 39—40, 71; 
refugees from, 185, 186. 

Belgrade, Austrian and Russian 
intrigues in, 141. 

Benedetti, French ambassador to 
Prussia, 108 — 09. 

Berlin, treaty of, broken, 149 ; 
University of, 94. 

Bernhardi, General von, his book, 
50 ; English opinions of it, 
51 ; analysis of it, 52 — 61 ; 
a disciple of Treitschke, 26, 
67 ; his views, on Germany's 
mission, 127 ; on German re- 
lations with Turkey and the 
Triple Alliance, 146, 150; 
British attempts at rapproche- 
ment, 155 ; International ar- 
bitration, 177—78. 

Bertie, Sir Francis, British am- 
bassador to France, his re- 
quest concerning Belgian neu- 
trality, 31. 

Bethmann-HoUweg, German Chan- 
cellor, and Belgian neutrality, 
12, 24, 25, 31, 32, 34, 61 ; 
statement as to the French 
colonies, 21, 24 ; proclama- 
tions of friendliness to Eng- 
land, 57. 

Bieberstein, Baron Marschall 



192 



INDEX 



von, German ambassador to 
Turkey, his influence, 146. 

Bismarck, Otto von, his work for 
Prussia, 64, 67, 83, 101—04, 
106—07, 109—10, 120; his 
methods, 29, 51—52, 105—06, 
107—08, 109—10, 184 ; princi- 
ples in dealing with parliamen- 
tary institutions, 105, 113 ; 
his later policy, 121 — 23; to- 
wards the French, 138, 155 — 
56; the Turks, 138; the Ru- 
manians, 144 ; the Russians, 
154 ; dismissed from the 
chancellorship, 117. 

Boer War, the, 72, 136, 154. 

Bona, town of, 37. 

Bosnia, under Austrian control, 
138 ; growth of national sen- 
timent in, 142 ; annexation 
of, 7, 141, 149, 

Bosnian question, the, and the 
European Concert, 167. 

Bourdon, M. Georges, journalist, 
his German interviews, 26, 
27, 28. 

Boxer rising, the, 137. 

Brandenburg, mark of, 84. 

Breslau, the, 37. 

Britain, ambassador of, to 
France, see Bertie, Sir F. ; 
to Germany, see Goschen, Sir 
Edward ; the Austrian note 
to Serbia and, 5 — 6 ; and 
Belgian neutrality, 30 — 33 ; 
in 1870, 31 ; conditions of 
neutrality of, 21, 22, 23, 24, 
25 ; efEorts for peace by, 9, 
22 ; relations with Germany, 
22, 23, 56, 96, 125, 128—31, 
135 — 36, 155; Germany's ha- 
tred of, 126 ; Bernhardi's views 
on, 57, 59, 60 ; Bismarck and, 
108 — 09; Treitschke and, 66 
— 67 ; and the Boer War, 72 ; 
and the Near East, 138, 146, 
149 ; a Mohammedan power, 
139, 147, 154; and the Mo- 
rocco question, 155 — 56, 157 ; 
and the Concert of Europe, 
165 — 66 ; and the conduct of 
the state, 74 ; and disarma- 
ment, 16, 182, 183; refugees 
in, 185. 

Brussels, Garde Civique of, dis- 
banded, 38 ; ransom demanded 
from, 41. 

Bulgaria, independence of, 138, 
170; Serbia and, 144—45, 
150; policy of, 145. 

Biilow, Prince, his opinion, of 
German people, 48 — 49 ; Prus- 
sia's relations with Germany, 



78 ; William II's policy. 133 ; 
the annexation of Bosnia, 
150 ; German relations with 
Turkey, 145 — 6, 150 ; with the 
United States, 135 ; his loss 
of power, 118. 

Bundesrat, the, 113 ; composition 
and powers of, 115 — 17, 118. 

Burschenschdften of German 
universities, 96. 

Canada, boundary of, settled by 

arbitration, 174, 
Carlyle, Thomas, his Influence on 

English thought, 65 — 66. 
Charles, King of Rumania, 144. 
China, defeated by Japan, 136. 
Clarendon, Lord, 179. 
Clausewltz, quoted by Bernhardl, 

67. 
Concert of Europe, the, 146, 153, 

162—69, 186. 
Congo, the French, Germany and, 

Constantinople, visited by William 
II, 146, 147 ; the railway from 
Vienna through Serbia, 140. 

Cretans, the, and union with 
Greece, 146. 

Crimean War, the, 166. 

Cyprus, British occupation of, 
138. 

Damascus, city of, 147. 
Delcass6 M., resignation of, 156. 
Denmark, Prussian war with, 

102, 104, 107; independence 

of, 170, 171; England and, 

35—36. 
Die PolitiJc, analysis of, 67 — 69 ; 

discussion of doctrines of, 70 

—76. 
Dinant, town of, 37. 
Disarmament, projects of, 179 — 

183. 
Droysen, J. G., Professor, and 

German politics, 64. 

)t, British control of, 57 — 
)8, 138; Turkey and, 146. 

Emden, the, 37. 

England, see Britain. 

Entente Cordiale, the, 154 — 55. 

Enver Bey, and the Young Turks, 
148. 

Euphrates, valley of the, Ger- 
many and, 139, 147. 

FehrbeUin, battle of, 85. 
Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, Tsar 

of Bulgaria, 144. 
France, German Liberals and, 97 ; 

the war of 1870, 30, 46, 107, 



Bgygt 



INDEX 



193 



108, 109; Italy joins Triple 
Alliance against, 122 ; policy 
of, in the Far East, 136; in 
the Mediterranean, 139 ; in 
Northern Africa, 155 — 56, 
157 ; a Mohammedan power, 
139, 147, 154 ; distrust between 
Germany and, 18, 21, 56; 
strength of, 58 ; and the Aus- 
trian note to Serbia, 6 ; and 
the efforts for peace, 9, 10 ; 
and the neutrality of Belgium, 
31, 60 — 61 ; and alliance with 
Russia, 154 ; and the Concert 
of Europe, 165 — 66 ; and inter- 
national arbitration, 175, 176. 

Frankfurt, parliament at, 98, 
100. 

Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of 
Austria, murder of, 5, 8, 20, 
29, 149, 152. 

Frederick the Great, King of 
Prussia, 33 ; admiration of, 
65 ; his pursuit of power, 69 — 
70, 87, 89 ; his view of truth, 
74 ; the Prussian state and, 
67, 83, 86; Maria Theresa 
and, 89; fraud of, 89 — 90. 

Frederick William, the Great 
Elector, and the Prussian 
state, 67, 83, 84, 85, 88. 

Frederick William I, King of 
Prussia, and the Prussian 
state, 83, 85, 87. 

Frederick William III, his vacil- 
lating policy, 99 — 100. 

Frederick William IV, and Aus- 
tria, 100. 

French Revolution, the, 90. 

Friedjung trial, the, 6 n. 

Geneva war code formulated at, 
184. 

George, Prince of Greece, gov- 
ernor of Crete, 146. 

Germany, development of, 46 — 
48, 78—110, 125; the Chan- 
cellor, powers of, 105, 113 — 
14, 115, 116, 117, 118, see also 
Bethmann-HoUweg ; the crown 
prince, loots castle of La 
Baye, 41 ; recommends Bern- 
hardi's book, 51 ; the Emper- 
or, his power, 105, 117 — 19, 
see also William II ; Empire 
of, its .constitution and gov- 
ernment, 111 — 20; states of, 
169 ; the Foreign Secretary, 
see Kiderlen-Waechter ; Kul- 
tur of, 20, 28, 40, 54, 56, 
97, 127, 128; learning of, 45, 
47, 80—82, 95, 96; polit- 
ical ideas in, 50, 62, 63, 



95, 179, 186; universities 
of, a department of state, 
49; influence of, 80, 82, 
95, 96, 106; the prepara- 
tions for war in, 2, 3, 14, 
15, 19, 29; army acts of. 17, 
18, 51, 52, 61 ; Army League 
of, 63 ; Pan-Germanist League, 
ib. ; army of, 39, 41, 47, 118 
— 20 ; naval preparations for 
war in, 16, 17, 51, 57, 58, 
61 ; the Navy League, 63 ; 
Navy Act, 133, 136; navy of, 
133 — 34 ; public opinion in, 28, 
29, 48, 49, 57, 63, 106, 134; 
peace efforts fail in, 11, 12, 
13, 121—23 ; indictments 
against, 44 ; relations with 
Austria, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 96, 
138—52 ; Belgian neutrality 
and, 21, 23, 24, 29 — 35, 36, 
173; relations of, with Eng- 
land, 24—29, 72, 128—29, 154 
— 55 ; the neutfality of Lux- 
emburg and, 29, 32; the Mo- 
rocco question and, 156—57; 
the Near East and, 7, 139 — 
53; Russia and, 14, 20, 21, 
22, 29, 56, 57, 63, 143—45, 
154—55, 167; colonial policy 
of, 55, 123—26, 131, 134, 138, 
see also William II ; and the 
Concert of Europe, 166 — 69; 
and disarmament, 179, 181, 
182, 183; and international 
arbitration, 175, 177 ; her con- 
duct of the war, 4, 77; vio- 
lates acts of Hague Confer- 
ence, 36—44, 184, 185; and 
treaty obligations, 187 — 88, 
see also Prussia. 

Giesebrecht, 127. 

Gladstone, Mr., and Belgian neu- 
trality in 1870, 30, 33. 

Gluck, 81. 

Goeben, the, 37. 

Goethe, 81, 110. 

Goltz, General von der, and the 
Turkish army, 148. 

Goschen, Sir Edward, British am- 
bassador to Germany, 12, 23, 
24, 25, 31. 

Gottingen, university of. 80. 

Great Elector, the, see Frederick 
William. 

Greece, German Liberals and, 97; 
Russia and, 138 ; Turkish war 
with, 148, 170; Cretans and, 
146; alliance of, with Bul- 
garia and Serbia, 150; Prince 
George of, 146. 

Grey, Sir Edward, and the Aus- 
trian note to Serbia, 6; his 



194 



INDEX 



opinion on Serbia's reply, 7 ; 
his efforts for peace, 9 — 12 ; 
refuses the offer of the Ger- 
man Chancellor, 24 ; and the 
Triple Entente, 155 ; agrees 
to the naval and military ex- 
perts taking counsel, 158 ; his 
use of the Concert of Europe, 
167. 
Grotius, and International Law, 
165. 

Hague, conference on disarma- 
ment at the, 181, 182 ; inter- 
national arbitration at the, 
175, 176. 

Hague Conventions, the, 185, 
186; violated, 36 — 42; neu- 
tral countries and, 42, 43. 

Halle, university of, 8.0. 

Handel, 81. 

Hanover, Prussia and, 91. 

Hardenburg, reformer, 92, 95. 

Hatzfeldt, Prince, interview with, 
27. 

Haydn, 81. 

Heligoland, fortification of, 16. 

Herder, 80. 

Herzegovina, annexation of Bos- 
nia and, see Bosnia. 

HohenzoUem princes, the, 48, 65, 
83, 84, 85, 88, 91 ; member of 
the house of, King of Ru- 
mania, 144. 

Holland, Germany and, 54, 63 ; 
neutrality of, 60 ; independ- 
ence of, 170 ; Belgian inde- 
pendence and, 170 ; interna- 
tional law in, 172 ; refugees 
in, 185. 

Holstein, annexation of, 107, 170. 

Holy Alliance, the, 164. 

Holy Roman Empire, the, 79. 

India, 57, 59, 139. 

Italy, the Austrian note to Serbia 
and, 5, 8 ; efforts for peace 
and, 9 ; Kingdom of, 169 ; 
German Liberals and, 97 ; pol- 
icy in Tripoli, 139, 148, 150; 
towards the Triple Alliance, 
21, 122, 150; the Morocco 
question, 156 ; the Concert of 
Europe, 166. 

Jameson raid, the, 135. 

Japan, defeats China, 136 ; hostile 
to Germany, 137, 143. 

Jena, defeat of Prussia at, 91. 

Junker nobility, the, 48, 83, 92, 
94, 95, 98, 120; Bismarck a 
member of, 101 ; parliamen- 



tary institutions and, 99, 100, 
101, 102. 

Kant, the philosopher, 80, 110. 

Kara-George, Serbian hero, 141. 

Karageorgevitch, Peter, King of 
Serbia, 141. 

Kerr, Herr Alfred, interview 
with, 27. 

Kiao-Chau, German seizure of, 
136, 137. 

Kiderlen-Waechter, German For- 
eign Secretary, his opinion of 
England, 24, 26; his reply 
concerning Belgian neutrality, 
31 32. 

Kiel Canal, the, 17, 158. 

Kruger, President, German tele- 
gram to, 135. 

La Baye, castle of, 41. 

Landtag, the, in the states of 
the German Empire, 111 ; 
Bismarck and the Prussian, 
102 — 04 ; see also Parliamen- 
tary institutions. 

Law, International, 162, 163, 164, 
165. 

Laws of war, 183 — 186. 

Leibnitz, the philosopher, 80. 

Lessing, 81. 

Lichnowsky, Prince, German am- 
bassador to England, inter- 
view with, 27. 

London, Conference of, 151 ; 
Treaty of, 187 — 88, and n. 

Louis XIV, King of France, 88. 

Lou vain, town of, 37, 42. 

Luther, 127. 

Luxemburg, neutrality of, 29, 32, 
171. 

Macaulay, Lord, his influence on 

English thought, 66. 
Madras, town of, bombarded, 87. 
Magdeburg, city of, 40. 
Malines, town of, 37, 42. 
Manchuria, Russia and, 143. 
Maria Theresa, of Austria, 33, 

89. 
Mesopotamia, 140, 153. 
Mexico, 39. 

Milan, King of Serbia, 141. 
Monroe doctrine, the, 134. 
Montenegro, 143. 
Morocco controversy, the, 63, 150, 

155—59, 167. 
Mozart, 81. 

Napoleon, lesson of his career, 
75 ; England and, 35 ; Ger- 
many and, 91 — 93; his de- 
feat, 163. 



INDEX 



195 



Napoleon III, and Bismarck, 108, 

109. 
Near East, German plans in, 136 

—39. 
Neutral countries, and the Hague 

Conventions, 42 — 43, 185—86. 
Nicholas II, Tsar of Russia, 180. 
Norway, independence of, 170. 

Obrenovitch, family of, 141. 
Oriental Railway Company, under 
Austro-German control, 147. 

Palestine, 139, 147. 

Panther, the, 157. 

Paris, Congress at, 178, 184 ; 
bombs in, 38. 

Parliamentary institutions, in 
Germany, 93, 94, 95, 96 — 98, 
100; weakness of, 112 — 13. 

Peking, siege of legations at, 137. 

Persia, German intrigues in, 58. 

Persian Gulf, 139. 

Philippeville, town of, 37. 

Poland, duchy of Prussia and, 84 ; 
duped by the Great Elector, 
88 ; sympathy of German Lib- 
erals with, 97 ; partitions of, 
89, 90, 91; Napoleon and, 91. 

Port Arthur, refused to Japan, 
136, 143. 

Portugal, independence of, 170. 

Pragmatic Sanction, the, 89. 

Princip, assassin, 152. 

Prussia, history of growth and 
development of, 82 — 110 ; sys- 
tem of government in, 112 — 
17 ; and the theories of the 
state, 64, 65, 66, 67, 109, 
110, 120, 121, 160, 162; bu- 
reaucracy of, 48, 87, 92, 98, 
99, 110, 120, 126; school of 
historians of, 64 — 65, 97, 110 ; 
Germany and, 46, 47, 64 — 65, 
77, 81, 82, 96, 117, 127; 
Belgium and, 30, 31, 171 ; 
Denmark and, 171 ; army of, 
desolation by, 183, see also 
Germany. 

Puffendorf, jurist, 83. 

Ranke, Leopold von, historian, 
65. 

RealpoUtih, doctrines of, 69 ; its 
defects, 74 — 75 ; German col- 
onisation, and, 131. 

Reichstag, the 114 — 16, 118; 
passes the army acts, 17, 18 ; 
the Navy Act, 133, 134; pro- 
tests against war taxation, 
19 ; statement on Belgian neu- 
trality in, 34 ; without effect- 
ive power, 48, 119, 120; 



Bernhardi's contempt for, 
52 ; Treitschke's influence in, 
66 ; Bismarck's use of, 105 ; 
a member of, interviewed, 28. 

Rheims, destruction in, 42. 

Rhine, the, 54. 

Rome, Empire of, 71 ; sack of, 
40. 

Rumania, creation of, 138, 170 ; 
Hohenzollern King of, 144 ; 
the Triple Alliance and, 145. 

Russia, and the Austrian note to 
Serbia, 6, 9 — 10; mobilisa- 
tion of, 13 and n. 14 ; strength 
of, 58 ; relations of, with Tur- 
key, Austria, Germany and 
the Balkan states, 138 — 49; 
with Japan in the Far East, 
136, 143; with Prussia, 91, 
100 ; also with Germany, 14. 
18, 20, 21, 56, 58, 63, 122' 143 
— 45, 154 — 55, 167; domes- 
tie affairs in, 143 ; a Moham- 
medan power, 147, 154 ; and 
the Morocco question, 156 ; 
and disarmament, 180, 181. 

Russo-Japanese War, the, 136, 
143. 

St. Petersburg, 184. 

Salisbury, earl of, and Armenian 
massacres, 146. 

Salonika, port of, 138, 140. 

Scharnhorst, Hanoverian re- 
former, the, 92. 

Schiller, 81. 

Schleswig, annexation of, 107. 
170. 

Schleswig-Holstein, settlemenjt 
of question of, 167; broken 
by Prussia, ib. 

Schmoller, Professor, interview 
with, 26. 

Sedan, German victory at, 31. 

Serbia, Austria and, 3, 5 — 9, 140 
—42, 145, 151, 171, 173; 
Bulgaria and, 149 ; Bulgaria 
and Greece ally with, 145 ; 
and the annexation of Bosnia, 
148, 149 ; independence of, 
138, 170 ; native dynasty in, 
143; hatred of Austria in, 
138, 140 — 41 ; Russia and, 9 

^ —11, 141, 142—143, 149. 

Seven Years' War, the, 89. 

Sheridan, protests against Eng- 
lish action against Denmark 
in 1807, 36. 

Sidmouth, protests against Eng- 
lish action against Denmark 
in 1807, 36. 

Silesia, conquest by Frederick 
the Great, 86, 89. 



196 



INDEX 



Slavonia, Austrian province of, 

142. 
South America, German interests 

in, 134. 
Soutli Africa, German interests 

in, 135 — 36, 158. 
South African War, the, 72, 136, 

154. 
South-West Africa, 175. 
Spain, German Liberals and, 97 ; 

the Morocco question and, 

156. 
Spanish-American War, the, 135. 
Stein, his reforms, 93; exile, 94 

— 95; influence, 99. 
Sweden, Prussia and, 85, 88 ; 

Norway and, 170. 
Switzerland, neutrality of, 30, 

171 ; independence of, 170 ; 

Red Cross system and, 172 ; 

Germany and, 54, 63. 
Sybel, Heinrich von. Professor, 

and German politics, 64. 
Syria, Germany and, 139 ; France 

and, 147. 

Tangier, port of, 156. 

Termonde, town of, 37. 

Teutonic Knights, the, 84. 

Thirty Years' War, the, 78^ 79, 
85. 

Tirpitz, Admiral von, Secretary 
of the German Navy, 63, 157 
—58. 

Transvaal, German armaments in, 
135. 

Treitschke, Heinrich von. Profess- 
or, his influence, 65, 66, 67, 
77 ; discussion of theories of, 
66 — 76; and Prussian politi- 
cal principles, 83, 110 ; and 
the Prussian system, 110 ; his 
admiration for Frederick the 
Great, 88 ; his doctrines an- 
ticipated, 88 ; his deduction 
from the defeat of Jena, 92 ; 
and small states, 169 ; his 
hatred of England, 25, 28, 69, 
126. 

Triple Alliance, the, 8, 122, 148 ; 
Turkey and, 140, 150 ; exten- 



sion meditated, 145; weaken- 
ing of, 150. 

Triple Entente, the, 56, 155, 158. 

Tripoli, Italy and, 139, 148, 150. 

Tunis, French occupation of, 138. 

Turkey, Germany and, 57, 139 — 
40, 145, 151; the Balkan 
states and, 143; the Triple 
Alliance and, 145 ; Bulgaria 
and, 145 ; Greek independence 
and, 170; railways of, 147; 
decay of, 137—38. 

United States, the, German dif- 
ficulties with, 134 — 35. 

Universities, see Germany, uni- 
versities of. 

Vattel, jurist, 183, 184. 

Venezuela, attempted German 
intervention in, 134 ; disputes 
concerning, 174. 

Vienna, Congress of, 163; rail- 
way from Constantinople, 
through Serbia, 140. 

Wagner, Professor Adolf, inter- 
view with, 26. 

Waldersee, Field-Marshal von, 
137. 

Weimar, court of, 95. 

Wellington, Duke of, and Prus- 
sian armies, 183. 

William I, King of Prussia, and 
the Prussian parliament, 102. 

William II, Emperor, 8, 31, 43, 
55 n., 63, 114, 115—16, 118; 
and Germany's mission, 128 
n ; his peace propaganda, 131 
— 32 ; his policy, 133 ; towards 
the navy, 133 — 34; colonial 
policy, 134—38; his visits to 
the East, 146 — 47; his anti- 
Russian policy, 154 — 05 ; and 
the Morocco question, 156 ; 
and cruelties of war, 184. 

Yellow Peril, German rhetoric 

on, 136, 137. 
Young Turks, movement of, 148. 



GERMANY AND THE NEXT WAR 

By General FRIEDRICH VON BERNHARDI. 
Authorized American Edition. 288 pp.. Cloth. 

"The present war has had some unexpected consequences. 
It has called the attention of the world outside of Germany 
to some amazing doctrines proclaimed there, which strike at 
the root of all international morality as well as of all inter- 
national law, and which threaten a return to primitive 
savagery. These doctrines may be found set forth in the 
widely circulated book entitled ' Germany and the Next War.' 
. . . They would have deserved little notice, much less refuta- 
tion, but for one deplorable fact — namely, that action has 
recently been taken by the government of a great nation . . . 
which is consonant with them and seems to imply a belief in 
their soundness. . . ." — Viscount James Bryce, in the N. Y. 
Tribune. 

" I am one of those who were obstinate in refusing to 
recognize Germany's intentions. I argued, I wrote, I joined 
the Anglo-German Friendship Society. . . . What brought 
about my change oi view was reading Bernhardi's book on 
* Germany and the Next War.' Bernhardi's programme, as 
outlined in his book, is actually being carried through." — 
CoNAN Doyle, in The Daily Chronicle. 

"There has never been a work so much discussed by 
serious thinkers the world over as this small volume by 
General von Bernhardi. Never have such vitally momentous 
questions involving the reconsideration of every principle 
upon which rests the entire structure of human civilization 
been stated and settled in such condensed form. And with 
phenomenal sagacity, he proceeds to describe what must take 
place precisely *as it is now occurring. 

" Indeed a close perusal of this remarkable book leaves the 
reader divided between indignation at the inhuman, cold- 
blooded doctrines so shamelessly promulgated, as illustrated 
to-day in the most stupendous carnage the world has seen, 
and unbounded admiration for the brain power of the super- 
man." — Philadelphia Public Ledger. 

"The Bernhardi book might have been published three 
months ago, so closely does it fit present conditions and the 
actions of Germany in this war. The publication of this 
book convinces mankind that the war in Europe must be 
fought out." — Ledger, Birmingham, Ala. 

LONGMANS. GREEN & CO., Publishers NEW YORK 



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